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Copyright})^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSnV 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 



BY 

ERNEST CARROLL MOORE 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 



COPYRIGHT, 1915, liV ERNEST CARROLL MOORE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ^ 



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GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



m 25 ISI6 






TO 

D. M. 



PREFACE 

This volume owes its inception to my efforts to teach 
college students and teachers how to study. As I have 
attempted year after year to discuss with my classes the 
ways and means of performing the student's work, the con- 
viction has grown upon me that one of the greatest needs 
both of teachers and of students at present is an elemen- 
tary knowledge of the philosophy of education. Two con- 
clusions have shaped themselves from this conviction, which 
stand out above all the rest. The first is that education is 
one and the same process in all grades of schools, and 
that the activities which we learn to perform with the help 
and guidance of teachers are the very activities which we 
shall have to continue to perform until we die. The second 
is that the confusion as to the nature of their undertaking, 
which hangs like a thick cloud about the efforts of teachers 
and students, cannot be dissipated save by an attempt to 
answer the question, What is knowledge ? The theory of 
knowledge has long been the battle ground of contending 
philosophical armies. It was the vital question of the great 
apostles of education, Socrates and Plato, before it became 
the private property of highly technical philosophical schools. 
It must once more, I believe, become one of the chief 
concerns of educators. 

[V] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

This book, therefore, is an attempt to discuss some of 
the fundamental presuppositions of education. It is a series 
of essays, somewhat closely related, upon a few of the sub- 
jects which I believe that we who follow the profession of 
teaching must perpetually keep turning over in our minds 
in order that clear ideas upon them may shape and control 
our work. 

I have attempted not only to set forth my own views 
upon these problems, but, when opportunity offered, to re- 
enforce them by the statements of other men. '' Have you 
ever observed that we pay more attention to a wise passage 
when it is quoted than when we read it in the original 
author.?" writes Hamerton. I have felt that I had a duty 
to attempt to secure for some wise passages which bear 
very immediately upon the theory of education as much 
attention as I can. 

The notions of education which I have attempted to out- 
line I have learned chiefly from Socrates and Plato. My 
indebtedness to two living teachers. Professor John Dewey 
and Professor Frank McMurry, I gratefully acknowledge ; 
it will be apparent to everyone who may do me the honor 
to turn the leaves of this book. 



ERNEST C. MOORE 



Cambridge, Massachusetts 



[vi] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. What is Education? i 

II. What is Knowledge? 30 

III. The Doctrine of General Discipline 59 

IV. Education as World Building 104 

V. The Kinds of Education 142 

i/VI. Learning by and for Doing 170 

VII. The Place of Method in Education 195 

VIII. Learning by Problem Getting 233 

IX. Organization by Selection 258 

\ X. Diagnostic Education 282 

XI. Learning to Work with Concepts 323 

INDEX 351 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 



Hamlet. . . . Will you play upon this pipe ? 

Guildenstern. My lord, 1 cannot. 

Hamlet. I pray you. 

Guildeiistem. Believe me, I cannot. 

Hamlet. I do beseech you. 

Guildenstern. I know no touch of it, my lord. 

Hamlet. It is as easy as lying : govern these ventages with your fingers 
and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most 
eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops. 

Guildenstern. But these cannot I command to any utterance of har- 
mony ; I have not the skill. 

Hamlet. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. 
You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my stops ; you would 
pluck out the heart of my mystery ; you would sound me from my lowest 
note to the top of my compass ; and there is much music, excellent voice, 
in this little organ ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood ! do you think 
I am easier to be played on than a pipe ? Call me what instrument you 
will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me. — Shakespeare, 
Hamlet, III, ii 

" All architecture," said Whitman, " is what you do to it when you look 
upon it . . . all music is what awakes from you when you are reminded 
by the instruments." — Quoted in the article, " Railway Junctions " in The 
Unpopular Revieiv, Vol. II, No. 3 

Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place; give me 
beauty in the inward soul ; and may the outward and inward man be at 
one. — Plato, Phaedrus, 279 '>*' 

For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. — Luke xvii, 21 

Agesilaus was once asked what he thought most proper for boys to 
learn. What they ought to do when men, was the reply. — Montaigne 



[^] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

CHAPTER I 

WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

Years ago, while a student in New York City, I 
attended a meeting of the Graduate Club of Colum- 
bia, which was addressed by some three or four of 
the leading professors of the University upon the 
subject, " How I came to choose the work which I 
am now doing." I remember that on that occasion 
Professor Brander Matthews told us how, as a 
student living in a garret in Paris, he made the 
acquaintance of the French drama; and Professor 
Franklin Giddings, how he came to devote his life 
to sociology; and that Professor, now President, 
Nicholas Murray Butler gave an account somewhat 
like this, of how he came to ^udy education. He 
said : " I was a junior in Columbia College when 
one day, as I was passing President Barnard's door, 
he called me into his office and said, ' Butler, what 
do you mean to do when you get out of college ? ' 
I replied : 'Mr. President, I have not decided, but I 
shall probably study law.' Then President Barnard 

[I] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

replied : ' Butler, do not do it There are plenty of 
lawyers already. Study education. In this country 
it is an unbroken field. There is no subject which 
so much merits study or which will yield larger 
return in point of opportunities for service to him 
who makes himself an authority in it than this sub- 
ject of education.' I replied, in a more or less vague 
way, that I did not know what he meant by educa- 
tion in that sense. He replied by giving me Ludwig 
Wiese's ' German Letters on English Education,' 
and asked me to read it, and after I had read it to 
come back and talk it over with him. I did read 
this book and became greatly interested in the 
whole field of reflection and study which it opened 
up. As a result, I read under President Barnard's 
guidance, during my next summer holiday, Karl 
von Raumer's ' Geschichte der Padagogik.' He 
pointed out that I must be sure to study philosophy 
in order to have a basis upon which to build any 
genuine knowledge of educational theory and prac- 
tice. With this, I was launched on what proved to 
be my professional career." 

The advice which President Barnard gave is not 
often given by university men to their students, yet 
his reasons for giving it are as sound to-day as when 
he uttered them. There is no subject which so much 
deserves study, or which offers larger opportunities 
for service to mankind than this. 

[2] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

Education is one of the major concerns of the 
race. The chiefs of the philosophers have regarded 
it a^ the one thing needful for the perfecting of 
states and the improving of lives. Civilized nations 
have taken its claims so seriously that giving in- 
struction and attending upon instruction is now the 
occupation in which the largest numbers of their 
people are engaged. "^ What was formerly the privi- 
lege of the few is now compulsory for all. The very 
magnitude of this undertaking puts it above the 
plane of indifference. The seriousness of the issues 
involved is such as to give the most unimaginative 
person who for a moment contemplates them a sense 
of responsibility almost too great for mortals to bear. 
Other occupations work with things or with human 
interests taken singly. This occupation assumes a 
guardianship over the generations which affects all 
that they do. The directors of schools, the makers 
of courses of study, and the teachers of the young 
are engaged in " choosing experiences for people," 
not for a day or an hour but for life. The study of 
education is the effort to put intelligence into that 
high task. " Nothing is worth doing, which is not 
worth thinking about." The world, even the edu- 
cated world, is quick to see that education is worth 
doing, but slow to admit that it is worth thinking 
about. Gradually it is being won over from its re- 
liance upon the customary and the traditional, and 

[3] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

hesitatingly it begins to examine the hfe which it 
prescribes for the young. The first fruits of intelH- 
gence applied to education are better laws and admin- 
istrative devices. These produce a better teaching 
personnel. Yet this is but a beginning of reforms. 
Those who teach must think about the experiences 
which they choose for those who are taught. 

One of the earliest books written in this country 
upon the work of the teacher begins with the 
question, " Why is it that there is such a ' singu- 
lar contrariety of opinion in regard to the pleasant- 
ness of the business of teaching ? ' " Some teachers 
regard their daily task as intolerable drudgery, 
others never cease to think and to talk of " their 
delightful labors." The answer is that " every mind 
is so constituted as to take a positive pleasure in 
the exercise of ingenuity, in adapting means to an 
end, and in watching their operation." ^ Those who 
do this find pleasure in their work, those who do 
not, regard it as drudgery. This continuous adapt- 
ing of means to ends is not only the sole expedient 
for vitalizing the teacher, it is the sole method of 
vitalizing the school and of vitalizing education 
itself. This is the thinking which is enjoined upon 
all who work at anything which is worth doing. 
Theory and practice must go hand in hand, for 
theory is nothing but thinking about practice, and 

1 Jacob Abbott, The Teacher. Boston, 1834. 

[4] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

the practice which is worth while must be thought 
about, that is, must grow out of theory. The notion 
that theory and practice should work together in 
education is older even than Socrates, for the first 
of the culture teachers of the Greeks, the gr^at 
Protagoras, left the world these two conclusions 
from his reflection upon education: the first, 
"teaching requires natural disposition and exercise, 
and must be begun in youth " ; the second, " neither 
theory without practice nor practice without theory 
avails at all." ^ 

Some tcses of theory. Without theory, practice 
must be a blind doing of what somebody else — 
tradition, authority, or accident — has directed. 
Rational purpose is lacking, there is no selecting 
of aims, no turning over of plans to decide which 
is best, and little checking up to find out the 
real w^orth of what has been accomplished. The 
individual situation is slighted. The authorities do 
the thinking, if indeed any is done. Other members 
of the undertaking are only hands to carry out their 
orders. " Tell us" exactly what should be done in a 
high school, and we will go and do it," say our stu- 
dents sometimes to us. The teacher can no more 
maintain himself on such a basis than the physician 
can. The principles of medicine are not rule-of- 
thumb recipes which tell him exactly what to do in 

1 Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, i-p. 441. 

[5] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

every given case. They are laws and rules which 
he must use to interpret his patients' needs. No 
one can fit the rules to the given case who does 
not know them and their advisory character. They 
are not guide-board directions; instead they call 
for application, since they always take the hypo- 
thetical form : if, in your practice, you find these 
conditions, it is best to proceed thus or thus. To 
attempt to work out the details of the procedure 
of education, apart from its concrete situations, 
results only in mechanizing instruction. 

The kind of practice which has value. Teachers 
when seeking a situation, frequently offer their 
long experience as an inducement to prospective 
employers to engage them. But it is not quantity 
of practice but quality of practice which determines 
expertness. Practice w^iich has not led to reflec- 
tion or been thought about atrophies intelligence. 
The merest beginner who brings his mind to his 
work is incalculably superior to such a routine in- 
structor. A wholesome doubt as to the sufficiency 
of what we are doing makes improvement possible. 
The race has not yet found out how to educate 
its children, though it has been trying for many 
years. Let us have theories, plenty of theories, the 
more the better, since we can hardly have too 
many minds at work upon this most difficult and 
urgent of problems. None but the mind saturated 

[6] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

with knowledge and well stocked with visions of 
the possibilities of education can detect the short- 
comings of its procedure. None but the theorist 
can discriminate its strength from its weakness, 
or actually see what is being done. None but the 
theorist can introduce experiments, devise stand- 
ards, suggest alternatives, or predict the probable 
outcome of a given course of action. "It is highly 
probable," writes Professor Baldwin, '' that two in 
every three children are more or less damaged or 
hindered in their mental and moral development in 
the school ; but," he adds, " I am not at all sure 
that they would fare any better if they stayed at 
home ! " There are plenty of problems to be solved. 

The wisely practical educator and the practical 
theorist are the only persons who can solve them ; 
the mere theorist, or the mere taker of orders, is 
as useless in education as he is everywhere else. 

Three grades of hiow ledge. There are three 
grades of knowledge which one may have of any 
given subject matter. They are usually distin- 
guished as ordinary, or common-sense, knowledge, 
scientific knowledge, and philosophic knowledge. 
Each of these grades of knowledge is due to a 
grouping, or classification, of experiences, and in 
each of them we take a present or a past experi- 
ence as the sign of a future one w^hich we seek \ 
to bring into being or to escape from. These 

[7] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

three grades of knowledge deal with the same 
phenomena, but from different standpoints. They 
are throughout one in kind. Difference of subject 
matter to w^hich they apply is not the mark which 
distinguishes them. It is commonly believed that 
ordinary knowledge does not enable one to predict, 
whereas scientific knowledge does. Yet every boy 
who drops a stone into the water knows before- 
hand that it will sink, as certainly as the scientist 
does. And every time one strikes a match, dis- 
charges a gun, or puts fire beneath water, seeds into 
the ground, or food on the table, he does so be- 
cause he predicts that certain results will happen. 
Human action of the most ordinary kind is based 
upon this power to predict. Wherein, then, does 
the superiority of scientific knowledge to common- 
sense knowledge lie? The boy cannot tell how fast 
the stone will fall. The scientist can. The man 
who discharges the gun cannot follow the series 
of changes which drive the bullet forward, or 
trace its course, or calculate the force of its impact. 
Science consists in the minuter examination of ex- 
perience. It seeks quantitative precision, where 
common sense reckons with a vague more-or-less. It 
coordinates remote happenings and traces relations 
among them which common sense had not sus- 
pected, as between the fall of an apple and the 
movement of a world, the death of a man from 

[8] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

yellow fever and the prevalence of a certain insect, 
etc. Common-sense knowledge tends to be per- 
sonal. Its facts are conceived in relation to a self, 
while science strives to be impersonal and to relate 
its facts to the body of facts which surround them. 
In order to trace relations between wide ranges 
of facts, science disengages the identities, which it 
traces, from the particularities which attend them, 
and states its results as abstract laws and systems 
of laws. Rub a board with a bit of sandpaper, or 
a piece of brass with a rag. The board or the piece 
of brass becomes hot. The common-sense fact is 
that this board, when rubbed, became hot. Science 
omits the details of the experience and fixes its 
attention upon the relations. " Friction produces 
heat " is the fact which it gathers. 

" If you want to know anything about education 
in the United States, ask the first man you meet 
on the street " is the advice which Superintendent 
McClymonds gave to Professor John Adams when 
he visited America. There is, however, a difference 
between common-sense knowledge of education and 
scientific knowledge of it, though the man in the 
street may not recognize it. There is a scientific 
knowledge of school legislation, of the way to build 
a schoolhouse, of school administration, of selecting 
the subjects for a course of study, and a scientific 
knowledge of children and of the procedure which 

[9] 



WHAT IS. EDUCATION? 

must be employed in instructing them. This knowl- 
edge, though by no means as exact as it is certain 
to become, is very considerable in extent and sig- 
nificant in value. Though as yet it is only to a 
slight degree quantitative in character, it is never- 
theless definitely scientific, in the same sense that 
comparative anatomy is scientific. School adminis- 
tration is a branch of government. It has been 
studied rather more intensively than most of the 
problems of government. Comparative methods 
have been employed, and conclusions of great 
directive value have been reached. It does not de- 
tract in the slightest degree from the worth and 
validity of these systematized conclusions that they 
are not commonly consulted when plans for ad- 
ministering school systems are being devised, just 
as it does not detract from the reality of a science 
of medicine for one who is sick to consult a quack 
rather than a scientific physician. The fact remains 
that in both cases minute and careful study has 
developed a body of knowledge more thorough- 
going and reliable than uncritical experience pro- 
vides, which stands ready for use by anyone who 
will use it. 

Genetic psychology likewise offers parents and 
teachers the rich results of its tireless researches 
into the nature and growth of the child. General 
psychology outlines the principles which govern 

[lO] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

the behavior of mind. Ethics, sociology, biology, 
and medicine contribute their quota of principles 
to be reduced to practice. The history of education 
outlines the experiments which the race has made 
in preparing the young for their life work, and the 
sufficiency or insufficiency of the social aims and 
methods which directed that preparation. The lan- 
guages, literatures, and sciences which provide the 
subject matter of instruction have been reduced 
to teachable form. The comparative study of the 
provisions for education w^hich progressive nations 
have made furnishes a systematized knowledge of 
educational pragtice throughout the civilized world. 

Though education is among the last of human 
institutions to invoke the aid of scientific method, 
it will thus be seen that scientific method has 
entered it, and that no one engaged in it is limited 
to rule-of-thumb knowledge. There is a science 
of education whose rich resources are available to 
anyone who will use them. 

PJiilosophic knoiuledge versus scientific knowledge. 
The science of education, like every other science, 
deals only with the coexistences and sequences of 
its particular field of facts. It is one among many 
sciences, each of which studies the world from 
its own standpoint. As yet it has made only a 
beginning, but even if it succeeds in tilling its 
field, like the other sciences it will possess only a 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

fragment of knowledge. Ask the astronomer what 
the universe is, and he will describe it in terms of 
astronomy. Ask the geologist, and he will answer 
in terms of geology. Ask the student of politics, 
and he will describe it in terms of organizations 
of government. And ask the educator, and he 
will answer in terms of schools and teaching. Is 
there no form of knowledge which relates all 
these different sciences together, which can answer 
such a question in terms common to them all — no 
science of things in general which can give us a 
picture of the universe as it is ? Education must 
become one of the sciences. Is there no science 
of sciences to unify its w^ork with theirs, to corre- 
late its truths with the whole body of truth? That 
function belongs to philosophy. Its work begins 
where science leaves off. It concerns itself with a 
critical examination of the hypotheses and assump- 
tions which the sciences make in order to solve 
their problems. It examines their foundation princi- 
ples, criticizes their concepts, and pieces together 
their systematizations. It is an unusually persistent 
effort to think matters down to their roots and out 
to their conclusions. While, in its criticism of the 
categories and systematization of the results of 
other forms of knowledge, it does not add to the 
facts wdiich the sciences amass, it does endeavor to 
determine their meaning, and the knowledge which 

[12] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

it supplies is knowledge rendered more exact and 
usable through consistency of interpretation. 

One frequently hears the statement that philoso- 
phy is of little worth. Quite recently it has been 
pointed out that, since it is theoretical, the practical 
business man has no need for it — unless he is a 
very practical man. The strangest thing about it 
is that no one can get along without it. As soon 
as we begin to think at all, each one of us sets 
about making a philosophy for himself, and never 
leaves off the work of constructing it until he dies. 
The difference between a common-sense philosophy 
and a critical and systematic one is somewhat 
analogous to the difference between common-sense 
knowledge and scientific knowledge ; that is, the 
latter is more thorough than the former, is made 
more carefully, its parts articulate better, it gives 
us a larger world which has more depth and 
steadfastness in it. 

Whether one's philosophy is homemade or aca- 
demically constructed, we must agree with Mr. 
Chesterton that the view of the universe which 
he keeps is the most practical and important 
thing about him. "We think that for a landlady 
considering a lodger it is important to know his 
income, but still more important to know his phi- 
losophy. We think that for a general about to fight 
an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's 

[13] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

numbers, but still more important to know the 
enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not 
whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, 
but whether in the long run anything else affects 
them." ^ And to us it seems that by far the most 
important thing about a teacher is the kind of phi- 
losophy of education which he carries about with 
him. How one couples up his notions of education 
with the scheme of things seems to us to be the 
most illuminating item that can be known about 
him. Indeed, so thoroughly do basic conceptions 
determine conduct that if he will tell us definitely 
and clearly what he thinks education is, we, on our 
part, will undertake to tell what methods he uses 
and what success attends his work. Can a teacher 
who has a wrong notion of what education is be a 
good teacher? Not if teaching is a conscious proc- 
ess. Can a teacher who has worked out a sound 
philosophy of education be a poor teacher? Not 
if ideas shape and determine practice. On the other 
hand, it seems to us that the teacher who lacks 
a sound philosophy of education is like a ship with- 
out a compass; he may pursue any course, or go 
anywhere, for he has no means of determining 
where he is or in what direction he is moving. 
What is education ? seems to us, therefore, to be 
the most fundamental of all the questions which 

^ G. K. Chesterton, Heretics. 

[14] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

condition the teachers work. It cannot be an- 
swered dogmatically. A merely verbal reply to it, 
committed for purposes of ready reference, will not 
do. I Out of the fullness of his own inner conviction 
each one must answer it in terms of his philosophy 
of life, and, like the other features of our philosophy 
of life, it is one of the fundamental problems which 
we should carry about with us and be constantly 
turning over in mind in an unceasing effort to allow 
no opportunity of revising our knowledge of it to 
escape us. There is no other way to work out a 
philosophy of education. 

Two typical definitiojis of education. There are 
a great many definitions which profess to tell us 
what education is. Let us consider two of them 
which are somewhat typical. The first is that edu- 
cation is the imparting of knowledge. While edu- 
cation undoubtedly has something to do with 
knowledge, it is hardly its function to impart it. It 
is not good form to say, " I learned him geometry 
or reading." The verb to learn will not bear that 
meaning. I may teach him geometry or reading, 
but he must do his learning of them for himself. 
Is it not just as wrong to use the verb teach in the 
sense in which we are forbidden to use the verb 
learji, and to say, " I taught him geometry or read- 
ing," meaning by that, " I imparted them to him "? I 
may keep a confectioner s shop and hand out candy 

[15] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

to you when you come to buy, or a coal yard and 
shovel coal into your cellar when you give me an 
order, but I cannot hand out knowledge or shovel 
it into the minds of students, no matter how willing 
they may be to get it in that fashion. Knowledge 
is not that sort of thing, and whatever schools may 
be, they are not knowledge shops. ^~ 

There is another sort of definition of education 
which, in attempting to escape the crudities of the 
one just given, involves itself in an even greater 
absurdity. The upholders of this view reason some- 
what like this: "Minds are very imperfect things at 
birth. If left to themselves, they grow up quite 
incomplete. It is the business of education to com- 
plete them. Its object is not to supply knowledge 
to them, for that indeed it cannot do, but it must 
discipline them, exercise them, build them up, draw 
them out, and form them. A mind which has not 
been drawn out will never come out of itself. No 
one should think of using so crude and dull an 
instrument as mind is before it is sharpened. It is 
the business of education to perfect the mind." 

I am profoundly convinced that, wiiatever else the 
teacher must do, he is never called upon to get 
inside the mind and do any burnishing or repair 
work there. We use a figure of speech when we 
talk of the gardener causing the plant to grow, 
and surely we use a figure of speech, and a very 

[i6] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

misleading one, when we speak of education as the 
process of molding, sharpening, forming, or perfect- 
ing minds. Much as it may contribute to our pride 
to think of ourselves as performing such a service, 
the thing is inconceivable. We have no such cre- 
ative power. In the Harvard Club in Boston there 
is one room set apart for the use of the graduates 
of the Medical School, and over the fireplace in 
that room there is an inscription, a motto, which 
states in a sentence the philosophy of the medical 
profession. It reads, " We dress the w^ound, God 
heals it." If a devoted student of education should 
attempt to construct a similar motto which would 
in like manner set forth the object of his profession, 
what form ought it to take ? This, I think : " We 
feed the mind, God makes it." 

W/iai is education ? When we teach we do not 
" learn " our students anything ; they must do that 
for themselves. The notion that language conveys 
thought or vehicles thought is the root of the error 
that education exists to impart thought. And when 
we teach we do not make minds or strengthen 
minds or draw them out. The mistake of deriv- 
ing the word edttcatiou from the wrong Latin root 
was, from the point of view of its consequences, 
one of the most serious mistakes that the race has 
yet made. What do we do? Let us see. When 
a feeble-minded child comes to school, the wise 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

teacher does not attempt to supply him with the 
regulation stock of knowledge, and she does not 
attempt to make his mind over. Neither of these 
things is possible. But there are certain things 
which even a feeble-minded child can learn to do 
that are socially useful and individually profitable. 
The wise teacher gives him a chance to do these 
things ; that is, to use his mind, not to exercise it 
merely, and not to take knowledge, but, by com- 
prehending what he can comprehend, to make 
knowledge. The pathological case supplies the in- 
sight we require concerning the normal one. Edu- 
cation must everywhere proceed in the same fashion. 
! I From the standpoint of the learner, it is the process 
lof using one's own mind in socially profitable ways 
in the making of knowledge. From the standpoint 
of the school, it is the process of providing the con- 
ditions which necessitate the child's using his own 
mind in socially profitable ways in the making of 
knowledge. The teacher cannot supply knowledge 
and cannot make mind ; his function is to provide 
the environment — to direct the child to the facts 
and methods of handling them which have been 
found to be socially useful, and to leave the rest 
to him. 

Three kinds of schools. There are three kinds of 
schools which grow out of these three conceptions 
of education. According to the first kind, the great 

[18] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

thing is knowledge. It is stored up in books, in 
courses of study, and in the minds of teachers and 
other learned folks. Schools exist to retail it to 
young people, to pass it on from the places where 
it is to the places where it is not. That it may bci 
passed on easily, it must be prepared in little care-! 
fully molded cubes or accurately weighed doses. 
That is the work of textbook makers and of manu- 
facturers of methods. Teaching, according to this 
view, consists in seeing to it that the learner takes 
the proper number of pellets of knowledge each 
day, and the object of the recitation is to find out 
whether or not he has done so. Since what he has 
taken is knowledge in its essential form, he must 
retain it in the form in which he took it. To see 
that he has done this and is continuing to do it, 
there must be periodical inspections of his stock 
of knowledge. These are called examinations. They 
occur at regular intervals, since the amassing of a 
fixed amount of knowledge and the retention of it 
in its original condition is thought to be necessary 
before one can safely amass further knowledge. 

The object of education according to this view 
is knowledge. The business of teaching is to put 
it where it is not. Textbooks are to provide it. 
Recitations are to find out whether or not it has 
been taken. Memory must retain it, and examina- 
tions must be given to test the knowledge state of 

[■9] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

pupils. Since knowledge is the one thing needful, 
the quantity of knowledge which can be compressed 
into the memory of a school child becomes a matter 
of vast importance. Courses of stud}^ are w^-itten 
chiefly, in many cases, to indicate the quantity which 
every good retailer of knowledge must succeed in 
lodging in the memory of each child. To cover the 
prescribed amount of work is the mark toward 
which the teacher is made to press and toward 
which she is usually, in such a system, overpressed. 
That the directing authorities may know that 
teacher and pupils are handling the required stint 
of knowledge, that teachers may know that pupils 
are stocking themselves with it and retaining it in 
undiminished state, that parents may know that 
their children are amassing the fixed heaps of pre- 
scribed facts, that the children themselves may 
know how much they know, great reliance is placed 
on examinations. They are given with great regu- 
larity. Their results are carefully tabulated. Chil- 
dren are weighed and measured by them, are 
encouraged or discouraged, are promoted or de- 
moted by them. As soon as one is over, everybody 
settles down to prepare for the next one. This is 
called an examination system of schools. 

It is conceivable that either a university or a 
kindergarten might be conducted in this way. 
Fortunately they are not, but elementary schools, 

[20] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

secondary schools, and colleges, not a few, are. The 
method is of long standing. Dr. McLean, formerly 
the head of the Pacific Theological School, once 
told me how he was taught theology at Princeton 
fifty years ago. He said : " Each day the professor 
brought our meat into the classroom cut up into 
neatly prepared little cubes, all of the same size. 
He then proceeded to insert the proper number 
of these into the stomach of each one of us. Two 
days after he looked into our stomachs to see if we 
were retaining them in the exact form in which he 
had given them to us." 

The second kind of school tends to regard knowl- 
edge as something common and unclean. It claims 
a loftier mission. It sets out to sharpen and perfect 
the mind by putting it to work not on matters that 
it will have to work on as long as its possessor 
lives, but on special teaching disciplines, valuable 
not because of the opportunities for knowledge- 
getting which they provide, but for the mental ex- 
ercises which one can perform in pursuing them. 
What you manipulate, they say, does not count. 
That you manipulate is the great thing. The best 
mental exercises are those which have been used so 
long that a perfect technique of using them has 
been developed. There are certain studies which 
are made much of in this type of school because 
they train the students not in the object matter 

[21] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

with which they profess to deal but in ratiocination 
in general. They provide hard work and plenty of 
it. They demand exactness. They enable teachers 
to assign fixed lessons of graduated difficulty, to 
require a system of recitations and examinations 
which tell exactly whether the student is meeting 
the requirements of the assignment or no. It makes 
little difference that the student after six or seven 
years of such labor will seem to himself to have 
learned nothing. The fact is that his mind will be 
a much more flexible and ready instrument because 
of this gymnastic. These are the mind-training 
schools. They make use of all the machinery which 
the others employ except the important element 
of knowledge. 

The third kind of school believes both in knowl- 
edge and in mental training, but it holds that they 
go together and cannot possibly be separated. It 
asserts that knowledge is inner conviction, organiz- 
ing experience in terms of vital need, and that, 
while mind can be trained specifically to organize 
experiences, since different experiences call each for 
its appropriate form of reaction, mind cannot be 
trained in general to make them. This school looks 
upon knowledge not as a fixed and immutable thing 
but as a useful tool which men have shaped to 
meet their needs in living. It is not at all finished 
or final. Men made it by thinking, and men will 

[22] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

improve it by thinking, and before anyone can use 
it, or any part of it, he must remake it through his 
own thinking for himself. What Moses thought or 
Plato thought or Euclid thought will never do me 
any good until I succeed in thinking it for myself. 
VThe great thing then for this school is not knowl- 
edge, but learning to use one's own mind upon 
matters which men have found to be important 
by using their minds upon them. Textbooks are 
important because they suggest to us some things 
which the race has found it important for us to 
think about. Teachers are important because they 
stimulate us to think by surrounding us with prob- 
lems and reasons for solving them and such help 
in going about the matter in profitable ways as we 
stand in need of. They help us to look at things 
and study things and talk about things and repeat 
things and memorize things which can best be 
thought about in these ways. And from time to 
time, to make both us and themselves better ac- 
quainted with the success which we are achieving 
in our thinking, they set specific pieces of work 
for us to perform and examine our performance of 
them with somewhat greater care than they can 
give to our day-by-day thinking. It is not the 
amount of ground which we cover or the number 
of courses which we " take " which decides whether 
or no we are getting an education, according to this 

[23] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

conception. Education is determined by what the 
student does. A single subject which has been 
pursued in such a way that he has learned to 
stand on his own feet and use his own mind in 
the getting and solving of its problems provides a 
more real education than a whole college course 
in which one has merely endeavored to appropri- 
ate the thoughts of other men or tried to become 
a thinker without thinking about anything which 
seemed to require thought. The first kind of school 
seeks to put its students in possession of results 
without allowing them to go through the processes 
of getting them. The second kind of school seeks 
to develop processes apart from the context of 
reality which gives them meaning. Its instruction 
goes on in a vacuum. It produces "thoughtless 
thinkers " ; while the first kind does not set out 
to make thinkers at all, and is rarely disappointed 
by having them develop. 

What can education do? No one of these kinds 
of schools exists in a pure state ; as we know them, 
they are only tendencies. Usually a keen discrimi- 
nator of educational practices — such as students 
themselves commonly are — finds all three kinds 
living under the same roof. Their presence makes 
for variety. Like certain religiously considerate 
communities of old, institutions of learning con- 
sciously practice the habit of erecting altars to all 

[24] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

of them, because they are unwilHng to take any 
chance of not worshiping the true God. This 
procedure is rather harder upon the students than 
upon the teachers, for "free trade in learning," 
which is dear to teachers, involves much com- 
pulsory miseducation which is destructively costly 
to students. 

If schools exist to feed the minds of students, 
and in the nature of the case they can do nothing 
else, they must regard their function as that of pur- 
veying the raw materials of knowledge.^ Bread and 
meat are not food until the individual who would 
get nourishment from them has himself reduced 
them to chyle. At that point they enter the blood 
and provide nourishment; that is, these raw mate- 
rials must be digested before they become available. 
To digest means to " tear apart," or separate the 
nutritious part from the innutritions part. When 
our private digestive laboratories have done this the 
human system, through its circulatory department, 
sets about reorganizing the chyle which it has pre- 
pared, by building human tissue out of it. In its 
main features the learning process is quite analo- 
gous. What is commonly called knowledge is only 
the raw material of knowledge — merely the oppor- 
tunity for the making of knowledge. Before it can 
be converted into vitalizing knowledge, it must be 
mentally digested and reorganized into personal 

[25] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

feeling, conviction, and action. Wlicn we speak of 
knowledge as a something stored up in books or 
records ready to be drawn off by anyone who will 
but open them, we must remember, as Bacon has 
told us, that "words are generally framed and ap- 
plied according to the conception of the vulgar, and 
draw lines of separation according to such differ- 
ences as the vulgar can follow." Knowledge has 
no such existence. It is always personal, though not 
necessarily private. It resides nowhere but in the 
mind which organizes it. Between the raw materials 
of food and muscular fitness for work there goes 
a long process of organic construction. Between 
the raw materials of knowledge and mental readi- 
ness to use it a similar intricate process of selection 
and organization intervenes. Education can do 
nothing but prepare the way for this process. The 
student himself must carry it on. Like pure reli- 
gion and undefiled, knowledge is ever a function 
of the consciousness of the believer. There are no 
educational sacraments which impart a saving grace. 
Mechanical education is easy, but it accomplishes 
only that which should not be accomplished. Real 
education is hard, for it is a spiritual ministration. 
The temptation to substitute mere physical manipu- 
lation for living interest, spiritual insight, and com- 
prehension ripening into action is the sin which 
besets us. 

[26] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

Edtication a life work. According to this view, 
education is a life process. The individual begins 
to organize his experience at birth and continues 
to organize it until he dies. At first the solicitous 
care of parents attends him; after that comes a long 
period of watchful direction on the part of teachers. 
The purpose of this entire ministration is to fit 
him progressively to undertake this responsibility for 
himself. The question is sometimes asked, How are 
the several stages of his education related ? As he 
passes from the elementary school to the secondary 
school, and from that to the higher school, and 
thence into life, how shall we image the journey 
which he is making or conceive the course which 
he pursues? In this way, I think: 



Let the diagram represent the ladder of life from 
birth to death ; since education is a life process it 

[27] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

may also represent the ladder of education. The 
space below the first rung is one's preschool experi- 
ence. Above it conies the elementary-school course, 
then the secondary-school, and above that the train- 
ing of the university. The teacher-student relation 
is common to all these, and if we left the diagram 
as it stands there would be nothing to indicate a 
progressive growth in fitness to assume the unaided 
direction of one's own learning. But draw a diag- 
onal from the bottom of the ladder at the left to 
the point where the teacher-student relation is 
represented as ceasing: 



Let the spaces to the right of the diagonal repre- 
sent what the teacher must do and the spaces on 
the left w^iat the student must do. The student's 
responsibility grows, and the teacher's directive 
control gradually disappears. The teacher makes 

[28] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

himself progressively unnecessary. The student 
little by little learns the process of learning and is 
at length able to apply it for himself. He has not 
mastered the omne scibile of his day and generation. 
" All that is knowable " he will never master. That 
is like the gold at the foot of the rainbow, a pleasing 
fancy of youth. No one ever searches for it. But 
to learn to order one's own experiences is a vital 
necessity and the workable purpose of education. 



[29 



CHAPTER II 

WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

Mind is " a survival agency^ We bring a mind 
with us when we come here at birth. By it we 
become aware of our own states and of the world 
of men and things about us. It seems to exist in 
order to guide us on our course through life, to be 
a sort of pilot to help us to make a safe journey. 
Consequently our awareness has been called " a 
survival agency." In perfect health one is not 
reminded that he has internal organs, and in per- 
fect adjustment one is but slightly conscious of 
an external world. When difficulties arise and this 
vegetable-like calm is broken, a condition of rela- 
tively keen awareness sets, which lasts in some 
form until the difficulty is disposed of and peace 
is restored again. This awareness seems to exist to 
enable the organism to locate its difficulties and 
to put an end to them — to be valuable in its 
struggle for life by enabling it to lay hold of or 
apprehend its world of objects. 

We seem also to be born into a world of ready- 
made things — the earth, the sky, the stars, time and 
space, the soil, rocks, trees, plants and animals, and, 

[30] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

most wonderful of all, our fellow men. All these we 
find here when we come. To live we must learn 
to avoid such of them as are harmful, and to lay 
fast hold upon those which are helpful. Knowl- 
edge, then, is necessary because some things in the 
universe menace death and others promise life. 

Is kiiozv ledge contributed by things? But what 
sort of a thing is knowledge ? And how do we 
come to have it ? The easiest and at the same 
time the most dangerous answer is that knowledge 
is due to things making pictures of themselves 
upon our minds ; that perfect knowledge or truth 
exists when this picturing is complete — when there 
is perfect agreement between the idea and the ob- 
ject or thing. According to this theory mind is only 
a rather intricate picture-making device — a kind 
of sensitive plate. It gets the images of things be- 
cause they stamp their images upon it. All knowl- 
edge is due to the impressions of things. Mind is 
a tabula rasa, upon which the senses write the 
images of the outer world. To be sure, it is differ- 
ent from a camera with which we take photographs, 
in that it remembers its past photographs of things 
and is constantly combining them in strange new 
ways, so that it is sometimes difficult to tell just 
which of its pictures are due to the impressions of 
outer things and which are due to the liberties it 
has taken in combining them. There are, however, 

[31] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

two kinds of true pictures : the direct and the in- 
direct — those which I take myself through the im- 
pressions which things make upon my own senses 
and those which others take and tell me about in 
some way or other, so that I am able in some meas- 
ure to copy their copy of the original and make for 
myself some sort of a picture of it. To be sure, the 
first-hand knowledge of the world of things is best ; 
but since it is impossible for each one of us to 
get as much of it as life requires us to have, we 
must be content to take a large part of it at second 
hand. This we do by means of books, papers, pic- 
tures, maps, music, conversation, instruction, lectures, 
sermons, etc. 

The essence of this theory is that knowledge is 
given to us by things. They are out there ; mind 
is shut up in here. The senses are the apertures 
through which they communicate their images. 
Mind must be passive to get the clearest and truest 
pictures from outer things. It must present itself 
clean to the truth w^iich comes to it from outside, 
or it will mix this truth up and blur it with its 
own past pictures. Strangely enough, both of the 
traditional schools of philosophy — realism and abso- 
lute idealism — define reality as eternally made ex- 
istence, and for both of them knowledge-getting can 
be nothing more than the copying of the object 
by the idea. Truth is something whose parts are 

[32] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

eternally complete. Knowledge is its phantom, its 
shadow in our minds. 

If we have copies only, how can we tell when they 
are true? Knowledge-getting is thus for these 
philosophies not a making but a receiving. Truth 
is an outer something which must come to us. 
The learner must simply hold the mirror up to the 
objective world. But if our minds are limited to 
copies of objects which are outside of them, if all 
truth is outside and nothing but copies inside the 
mind, how can it ever find out whether its copies 
agree with their originals or not ? How can we 
possibly tell when the picture corresponds with 
the reality which it professes to picture ? On this 
theory we are forever limited to the picture only; 
the original is at all times beyond our reach. To 
tell whether our copy, or picture, is adequate or 
inadequate, true or false, we must compare it with 
the thing which it professes to picture, but when 
we try to do that we get only another copy of the 
object, not the thing itself. To compare reality with 
its appearance, we should somehow have to know 
reality apart from every appearance ; and this we 
cannot do. A true mental picture, or idea, claims to 
correspond with its object. But so also does a false 
one. How shall we tell which is which? If knowl- 
edge is merely the copying of the object to be 
known by the idea which knows it, we never can tell. 

[33] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

What do we know of objects outside of experience ? 
This theory of what knowledge is will not work, 
and we must backtrack a bit to find the right path. 
What right have we to talk about things and truths 
which are outside of awareness ? Can we say any- 
thing or think anything about the things that no 
one in any way knows — the things that are alto- 
gether outside of experience ? If I say the air is 
peopled with myriads of spirits, you immediately 
reply : " Not so, for no one has seen them or heard 
them or in any way communicated with them. 
Since they have not made themselves known, they 
are not." But perhaps if you are not a dogmatist 
you will add the proviso that if they do make 
themselves known we shall then have to revise 
this judgment. At any rate, they are not until 
they are known. It is exactly the same with every- 
thing. When my friend tells me that the Washing- 
ton Elm is no longer standing, I reply, " I saw it 
but a moment ago as I passed the spot, and I am 
confident that it is still there and that you are 
mistaken." If a shipmaster comes into port and 
announces that an immense island has arisen in 
a certain quarter of the sea, and other shipmasters 
who were in the same latitude and longitude at 
the same time report that they saw no island, we 
shall have to believe that the first shipmaster is 
deceiving us and perhaps himself, for the weight 

[34] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

of experience would seem to prove that there is no 
island. When Bishop Berkeley startled mankind by 
announcing that objects exist only in so far as they 
are known, it is said that Dr. Johnson vigorously de- 
nounced the doctrine ; and while arraigning it with 
his usual vehemence in the presence of a group of 
friends one day, he strode majestically up to a stone 
wall and kicked it, saying as he did so, " This is the 
way I refute the Bishop's error." But did he refute 
it ? Did he not instead completely prove the Bishop's 
contention ? It is only a stone wall that one can kick 
and feel the kick back from that can really be said 
to exist. If a man opens his purse to show me that 
he has a hundred dollars in it and discloses nothing 
there, I become convinced that his hundred dollars 
were imaginary. The real hundred dollars must be 
distinguished from the imaginary hundred dollars, 
said Immanuel Kant, by the fact that they can be 
touched and seen, or that we can pass them at the 
bread shop or the clothing store. Thus experience is 
the measure of all things, of those that are that they 
are and of those that are not that they are not, and it 
is impossible in any way to get outside of experience 
to find out whether its reports agree with objects, or 
things-in-themselves, or not. The only world which 
is or can be is the world within experience.^ No one 

1 " What all think we say />," Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. X, Sect. II (Chase's 
translation). 

[35] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

can get outside the world of experience to find out 
whether his ideas accord with things-as-they-are-in- 
themselves or not. The harder one tries to beHeve 
in things-in-themselves, the more certain he be- 
comes that Betsey Prig disposed of them when she 
uttered '' those memorable and tremendous words " 
to Mrs. Gamp concerning the existence of Mrs. 
Harris : " I don't believe there 's no sich a person." 
T/ie objects we are concerned with are objects as 
they are experienced. The object of knowledge is 
not " absolute truth." Our ideas cannot possibly 
get into correspondence with things-in-themselves. 
We are experience-bound and can know things 
only as they are for mind. Everything that is 
must enter the subject-object relation. " We can 
think of matter only in terms of mind," says Her- 
bert Spencer, and Huxley likewise maintained that 
" all the phenomena of nature are known to us only 
as facts of consciousness." But this is no doctrine 
of despair. Just as the dollars that we can heft and 
see and count and trade for bread and coats are 
the only real dollars, and the dollars that we cannot 
pass either upon ourselves or other folks are the 
imaginary ones, so is it with all the facts and exist- 
ences of the world. I say there is a study table in 
my room because I find it there and work upon it. 
Just at the moment that I do not find it there I 
shall be compelled to say that it is there no longer, 

[36] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

What is truth ? Truth is a relation which exists 
between the parts of experience, between idea and 
idea, and not between idea and thing. It is an ex- 
perienceable and not an inexperienceable relation. 
And yet not all experiences are true, and only a 
small part of those which may assume the truth 
relation furnish or can furnish knowledge. I repeat 
the letters of the alphabet, or I pull a rose to 
pieces. Is either experience true or not true? You 
hear me sound the letters and you say, " You have 
not named them in their order." " But," I reply, 
" their order was indifferent to me. I am not try- 
ing to name them in order." As soon as I try to 
name them in their order and succeed or fail, the 
quality of truth or falsity attaches to my act. The 
clock ticks, the table supports my paper, the ink 
flows, the temperature of the room remains equable, 
the rain beats against the windows, a thousand 
things are going on about me, and yet they are 
neither true nor false. They are just happenings. 
They simply are. How shall I name them ? There 
is one word by which they are commonly desig- 
nated, though this word has other and very con- 
fusing uses. It is the woxdi facts. Because they are 
so utterly useless, these mere happenings have a 
very singular quality — they are eternally the same. 
That a fly buzzed, or the clock ticked, or the table 
was hard, or the temperature was 68 degrees just 

[37] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

now, is an eternal fact. But taken without a con- 
text it has not the shghtest significance and no 
truth whatever. But let the ticking of the clock 
stop or the room become cold, and very soon atten- 
tion fastens upon these parts of experience for con- 
sideration. Has the clock stopped? Is it too cold 
here ? These are experiences which are either true 
or false. We listen for the familiar tick. We look at 
the pendulum. Yes, it is true that the clock has 
stopped. And the thermometer shows that the 
temperature is now but 6i degrees. Our surmise 
is verified. Our belief was true. 

Facts^ truths^ and knowledge. Facts are very 
profitless things until we use them. When w^e re- 
late them to purposes they take on meaning and 
become immensely important. But if it is plain 
that facts as facts are not truths, is it equally clear 
that truths as truths are not knowledge? It was 
true that the clock had stopped and that the room 
was too cold. Are these truths knowledge ? I have 
already closed the window and wound the clock. 
I shall most likely never have occasion to refer to 
these particular experiences again. Can they then 
in any legitimate sense be said to furnish knowl- 
edge? Knowledge is a high and dignified word, 
with which spells are worked and lives are bought 
and sold. Would it not be well to attempt to give 
it a more vital meaning than this? Let us see. 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

I have just moved into a new house. There are 
five thousand books upon the floor and they must 
all be arranged on the bookshelves in the library. 
In how many possible ways can w^e arrange them? 
We can arrange them according to size, the color 
of their bindings, the names of their authors, ac- 
cording to subjects or size of type, according to 
the number of times the word the or any other 
word appears in each, by the number of commas, 
semicolons, and periods, the number of lines on a 
page or words in a line, according to weight or the 
number of times the letter a or any other letter 
is used in each. It seems likely that there are an 
infinite number of ways in which the books in a 
library^ can be arranged. Which of these will be 
the right or the true way? Is there any one 
eternally fixed and divinely instituted sole-and-only- 
correct way of arranging the books in a library? 
If there is, does any man yet know what it is ? 
If my books are of various sizes and my shelves 
of but two or three, I shall have to arrange them 
according to size. If I bought the books for their 
bindings, I should undoubtedly arrange them ac- 
cording to a color scheme. But if I use my books 
by repeatedly consulting them, I must arrange 
them in such a way that I can find them quickly 
and easily when I want them. It is certain that I 
shall not be able to make this arrangement offhand, 

[39] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

and very likely, no matter how well I know my 
books, I shall need to consider the experience 
that other people who have arranged libraries have 
put at my disposal in books in which they have 
recounted it. At any rate, I shall have to arrange 
and rearrange my books ; and it is not likely that 
I shall ever get them so perfectly classified that 
the advent of new books and the arising of new 
needs will not force me to rearrange them. What 
seems very clear in this undertaking is that the 
true arrangement is the one which most nearly 
answers my need — that I find out whether it is 
true or not only by trying it out, and that in the 
nature of the case it must constantly undergo re- 
vision. It must be noted that our arrangement of 
the books cannot be a fanciful or purely subjective 
one. It is in the strictest sense determined by 
relating the nature of the books to our purpose or 
need. Now is this true only of books or is it true 
of all our mentally recorded forms of knowledge ? 
I think it is true of all of them. Take any object 
— a chair, a table, the sun, a rock, or a man. In 
how many ways is it possible to view it or take 
it ? Here again the answer is that its abstractly 
possible relations are infinite in number. Is it one 
or is it many ? That altogether depends upon your 
point of view. For the physicist each of these ob- 
jects is a mass of whirling atoms and each of its 

[40] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

constituent atoms again is infinitely divisible. " If, 
as we shall see," says Professor John Cox in his 
little book " Beyond the Atom," " the mass of an 
electron is wholly electrical its diameter can be 
shown to be of the order lo^'^cm. ; that of an atom 
is io""^Vm. The electron is thus one hundred thou- 
sand times smaller than the atom and the spaces 
between electrons perhaps one hundred million 
times the diameter of an electron. This suggests 
inevitably an arrangement like a planetary system." 
" Let us consider a ball lying on the ground. In 
what sense is that ball individuated? Our main 
reason for calling it so is its capacity for satisfying 
our athletic propensities; but whatever else may 
pertain to matter-in-itself it is clear enough that 
this quality is not relevant. The ball, however, can 
be easily lifted from the earth, whereas the molehill 
near it, resembling it in appearance, would require 
a spade, if separation is to be effected. This is 
merely a question of degree of cohesive force. To 
the Lilliputian the ball would be as completely a 
part of the earth as the molehill. Imagine also a 
giant whose body stretched from the Solar System 
to Sirius and who regarded our whole solar system 
as a single body; if he were possessed of sufficient 
analytic power and provided with sufficiently deli- 
cate analytical instruments, he might then distin- 
guish sun, earth, and other planets as constituent 

[41] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

factors of that single body. If his sensational ap- 
paratus were proportionately coarser than ours from 
the point of view of their perceptive powers, he 
would not even appreciate the solar heat as such." ^ 
Why then do we call things one when they are 
many ? Physical individuation is due to purpose. 
Whether a thing is one or many depends upon our 
intention. The word one is in our name for the 
whole — the universe. The lowest term to which we 
at present reduce it, the electron, is also one, and 
everything that comes between is either one or 
many to suit our purpose. Nor is this all. Every 
one of these ones of our making has some sort of 
relation to everything else in existence. It is larger 
or smaller, heavier or lighter, brighter or darker, 
more active or passive, eastward or westward, simi- 
lar or dissimilar to everything else there is. The 
possible relations which any one thing can bear 
to the rest of existence are infinite in number. If 
we are for a moment tempted to define knowledge 
as the comprehension of that which is, we are at 
once appalled by the absurd presumption of such 
a notion. The field of possible knowledge lies in- 
finitely extended before the mind, but we are under 
no temptation to apply the word to any and every 
relation which consciousness may note in existence. 
Even the most enthusiastic devotee of original 

1 Arnold, Scientific Fact and Metaphysical Reality, p. 71. London, 1904. 

[42] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

research is not likely to set about examining, de- 
scribing, and comparing the sands of the seashore 
for the same reason that he is not likely to set 
about arranging his books according to the number 
of times the word tJie is used in each volume. The 
notion that just any kind of description or classi- 
fication is science does not work. The realm of 
knowledge is much smaller than the realm of fact. 
Take for example this table ; from how many dif- 
ferent points of view may I look at it? No one 
can count them ; but if they could be compassed, the 
table could conceivably be drawn from every one of 
them, and every single picture of the table, if it 
checked up with subsequent pictures of it from the 
same point of view, would be a true picture of it. 
Now which one of this infinite number of appear- 
ances or aspects of the table is the real table? Is 
there any one and only true way to draw a table ? 
May not one sketch it from above or below, from 
north, northeast, or south, southwest, and still make 
a true picture of it? Abstractly one aspect of the 
table is just as true as another, but not so con- 
cretely. Concretely a table is for use, and that 
aspect of it which presents its use relations the 
crystallized experience of the race has voted to re- 
gard as the preferred aspect, the real table. If you 
are buying one, you must be careful to get one 
which fits your intention ; if you are drawing one, 

[43] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

you must be careful to draw one which fits your 
intention also. I am not saying that you can draw 
it as you please any more than you can arrange 
your books in any way you may fancy. To be sure 
you can do both these things, only neither the draw- 
ing nor the arrangement will be true. When you 
come to check them up, you will find that future 
need will not be realized in them ; that is, they 
will not work out the test of truth. 

Is there any object in existence which has always 
the same color no matter what light may play upon 
it, always the same shape no matter from what 
angle or at w^iat distance we may behold it, always 
the same smoothness no matter how many times 
we may magnify its surface, always the same re- 
sistance no matter what the force that opposes it, 
which has the same weight at the center of the 
earth, at its surface, and on a mountain top ? Is there, 
in short, anything whose qualities do not change 
with our changing relation to it ? If there is any- 
where such unchanging thing, to know it will be 
to think of it in but one way; but in the case of 
the things that change w4th our relation to them 
we must take our choice of the many possible ways 
of thinking of them, and in that choice we shall be 
constrained by our need to single out that aspect 
of them which will give us the largest measure of 
control over them. 

[44] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

What is it that zue name? A noun, accord- 
ing to the grammar definition, is the name of a 
particular thing, but this definition is incorrect — 
there are no words in language which are the 
names of particular things. All words, whether 
verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, or conjunc- 
tions, are nouns in the sense of being names, but 
no one of them is the name of a percept or a pres- 
ent particular experience. They are all names of 
kinds of things, of classes or concepts. We might 
have one name for John when he is young and 
another when he is old ; one when he is angry and 
another for him when he is happy; one name for 
him when he is asleep and another for him when 
he is awake ; one for him when he is in health and 
another when he is sick. He is a different per- 
son to my different perceptions of him. But for 
him in all his different moods and conditions I 
have just one name. Why is this? Would it not 
be better to give him one name when he is angry 
and another when he is not angry? He is so very 
different in the two conditions that I am sometimes 
led to say that he is two different persons. If 
language existed for the sake merely of describ- 
ing happenings, I should have at least two names 
for him. If knowledge about him consisted merely 
in the notation of facts, I should have to give a 
separate name to each different and eternally true 

[45] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

particular fact about him. Is it, then, for mere 
economy of utterance that I do not do this, but 
instead give him one name ? Naming is not for 
purposes of fact-designating. In a sense it is for 
purposes of fact-obscuring. We give him one name, 
which he carries with him through Hfe, which en- 
ables us to forget that he is young or old, rich or 
poor, sick or well, stooped or straight, angry or not 
angry, honest or dishonest, honorable or dishonor- 
able. Would it not be better if we named noble 
men by noble names and ignoble ones by ignoble 
names, so that the whole world would at once know 
how to take them ? Not so. That one aspect which 
the whole world must note in dealing with them 
is just that they are human beings, and as such 
they must be taken, so we give them proper names, 
the names proper to human beings, which of them- 
selves indicate nothing as to the facts of their past 
lives, nothing as to what we must expect of them 
except the greatest fact of all — that they are just 
human beings, the particulars of whose action we 
can anticipate best, not by being at once made 
aware of what they have done or what so-called 
traits of character they possess, but just by approach- 
ing them with the uncertainty and expectancy which 
belongs only to undiscovered but generally known 
objects. When conditions arise under which all the 
members of a human group must be treated alike, 

[46] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

as in a prison or for certain purposes in the army, 
their proper names arc for these purposes over- 
looked, and they are all reduced to the level of 
numbers. It is conceivable that we shall grow in 
grace to the extent of disregarding nationality and 
ancestral religious differences in our naming of 
human beings, and that difference of sex may in 
time not be regarded as so fundamental a human 
consideration as to require a separate form of 
proper name for its indication. At any rate, real 
sex equality can hardly exist until human equality 
registers itself as the more fundamental fact in our 
scheme of formulating our anticipations. 

Have pi^oper names always belonged to hiiinan 
animals? The first act or work that Adam is 
represented as performing was the naming of the 
animals. " And out of the ground the Lord God 
formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of 
the air ; and brought them unto Adam to see what 
he would call them : and whatsoever Adam called 
every living creature, that was the name thereof." 
Yet it is certain that these Adamic names did not 
stick, and that the first and the continuing social 
work which every child of Adam has ever since 
had to perform is to rename the animals and all 
the objects in his world of experience. What kinds 
of names did Adam give them ? Proper names or 
common names .^ It is certain that for perhaps 

[47] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

thousands of years only tlic men of power and 
their associates had particular, or proper, names ; the 
insignificant ones had none. In historic and even 
in very recent days slaves had no proper names. 
In exceptional cases, that is, when in some way or 
other expectation singled them out for peculiar 
attention, they earned names. To the oft-repeated 
query " What 's in a name ? " we must reply, there- 
fore, "A whole philosophy and much of the history 
of the race." An object is named not because it is 
an object or a fact, but because of our expectation 
as to its future — because of our anticipation of 
further experience of it. The name we give it is 
only our designation of our intention with regard 
to it, our indication of our plan to use it or act 
toward it in the way the name indicates. Relatively 
few of the animals attain proper names, and inani- 
mate objects seldom are honored with them. But 
sometimes they secure such a hold upon our atten- 
tion that we can no longer treat them adequately 
if we refer to them merely as instances of their 
kind. They must be promoted to something like an 
equality of consideration with ourselves. Thus, by 
a strange inversion, human beings are under certain 
conditions deprived of proper names, and animals 
and even inanimate objects are given them; but it 
is our desire to accord special treatment to both 
of them, not only now but during the prospective 

[48] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

period of our contact with them that causes us to 
give or take away their individual names. Like the 
king or the college, we confer a title not merely 
to register the fact that we conceive that the re- 
cipient has deserved it, but at the same time we 
call upon all mankind, and most especially pledge 
ourselves, to accord to them all the privileges, rights, 
immunities, honors, to which they are entitled. Thus 
names are primarily scaffoldings from which we 
would build our future acts. 

Why do we name kinds of things rather than 
things taken ijidividually ? Most animals and inani- 
mate objects we do not find ourselves constrained 
to honor with particular names. We act and react 
to them best, both mentally and muscularly, by 
naming them by their kinds. This dog, this gun, 
this bird, this circle, this wagon, as an existence, to 
be sure, is different from every other existence of its 
kind ; but every dog is an object to beware of or pet 
and make friends with, and every gun is an object 
to shoot with and to handle carefully; hence one 
name wall do for them all. Sensory experience is 
wide and full of variety, but motor reactions are 
narrow in range, and repetition is their character- 
istic. We name these things whose particularity is 
nothing to us, not for what they are but for what 
we do or can do with them. "It is evident," says 
Professor Baldwin, " that the ' general ' or ' abstract ' 

[49] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

is not a content at all. It is an attitude, an expec- 
tation, a motor tendency. It is the possibility of a 
reaction which will answer equally for a great many 
particular experiences." " All general ideas," says 
Professor Royce, " are the mental aspects of habits 
of response in presence of those general characters 
of things to which the ideas in question relate. 
Without motor habits, no ideas." The sensory sys- 
tem is like the mouth of the funnel ; the motor 
system is its narrow neck. Hence the value of re- 
ducing things to kinds. It is what we do with the 
object that we name. Knowledge comes through 
conceptualizing, through locating meanings, but to 
get it we must disregard all particularity of facts 
about the object and cleave fast to its significance. 
Again, it is our purpose which determines which of 
its many possible meanings we shall choose. When- 
ever our purpose involves more than casual dealings 
with dogs, guns, or automobiles, we must handle 
them under subclasses. The breeder's knowledge 
of dogs must be different from the veterinarian's; 
the maker's knowledge of the automobile must be 
different from the user's. 

Does knowiiig anything 7nean tJie ability to tisc 
it in all possible ways? It has various meanings; 
we must choose those that minister to our needs. 
Here is an object which I picked up from the 
ground near the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico. 

[50] 



I 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

As nearly as I can tell, no one knows what it is, 
though such objects are common in that country. 
It is made of burnt clay, is round and of about two 
inches in diameter, is ornamented, and has a small 
hole in the center. It has a certain weight, which I 
can determine. I can also learn many other things 
about it. But still I say I do not know w^hat it is. 
If I knew the name of the ancient Indian who 
made it or the process by which he made it, I should 
still be dissatisfied wdth my knowledge about it. 
What is it I want to know before I can say that I 
know it t Simply its use. Professor James divided 
knowledge into two kinds — knowledge about things 
and knowledge of things. The knowledge of things 
is knowledge of use. Without it the rest is mere 
description. It alone enables me in imagination to 
sit down in the seat of the ancient Indian and take 
this object in my hand, and in thought to refer it 
to its place in • a possible scheme of things. It 
alone has the forward look — the relation to pur- 
pose that all real knowledge must have to distin- 
guish it from merely mental lumber out of which 
homes could be built if we only had plans with 
which to shape them. Use alone furnishes the 
organizing principle which gives the related facts 
significance and welds them into a system. 

What is the cause of anything? We sometimes 
say that to know things is to know their causes, 

[51] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

but the causes of things are numerous. " The whole 
state of the universe is ultimately responsible for 
any given result." The real cause of anything is 
the sum total of existence, and Tennyson was 
speaking literally as well as poetically when he 
declared to the flower in the crannied wall that to 
know it is to know what God and man is. Yet 
we shall save our souls from scholasticism on the 
one hand and from whatever bargains we may 
make with the devil on the other by learning at 
last, as Faust did, that life and mind find the satis- 
faction of reality only in helping the peasants to 
save their fields. 

What we denominate the cause of anything is 
inextricably mixed up with our own purposes and 
suffused with our own energies. It is that phase 
of the sum total of the conditions of its existence 
which we select because of its future reference, not 
to the reenactment of the thing, but as affording 
us the peculiar form of control over the thing that 
we are for the time being seeking. Causes, like 
every other form of knowledge, are therefore full 
of relativity. Here is a case of typhoid fever. What 
caused it ? The whole state and condition of the 
patient, together with his past acts and a chain of 
ancestral conditions stretching out to infinity, have 
conspired together to bring this particular person 
just at this particular moment to his sick bed. 

[52] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

Why do we dismiss all the rest and say that the 
typhoid fever is undoubtedly due to his drinking 
polluted water or milk? Other members of his 
family have partaken of the same water or the 
same milk; yet they are not sick. It must be, there- 
fore, that his sickness is due to the fact that he 
was in a depressed condition of being, that his 
bodily resistance was low and theirs perhaps was 
not. His organism was hospitable to the bacteria 
that are ever seeking guest privileges from us, and 
theirs w^ere not. Why do we not say, then, that 
typhoid fever is caused by a poor condition of re- 
sistance on the part of the human organism and 
not by polluted water or milk? The answer would 
seem to be that bodily resistance is by no means so 
controllable a factor or so removable a condition as 
the purification of the water or the milk. We name 
them the cause rather than it, for the reason that 
we can take hold by that particular handle and 
lift the burden more easily than we can by any 
other of its innumerable handles. Right here we 
have an excellent illustration of the fact that what 
we call the cause of a happening is a function of our 
activity and not of the thing in itself — that causes 
are unitable with experience and not preexistent 
and forever fixed, and that our obligation to them 
is to find them in terms of control and not in terms 
of their absolute being. It is this: Inoculation 

[53] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

is now employed as a preventive of typhoid fever. 
Suppose that of a group of say six soldiers or 
six travelers, five have taken the precaution to be 
inoculated before setting out on the campaign or 
on the journey. They drink of the same water and 
the same milk, and the sixth one contracts typhoid 
fever. The others do not. What shall we say catised 
his typhoid fever? The polluted water or milk? 
or a low general state of resistance ? or the fact 
that he had not taken the precaution which the 
others took? Undoubtedly the last; and if, in the 
development of medical experience of this disease, 
it shall be found that this precaution works, then 
failure to employ it, and not the taking of polluted 
water or milk, or a low general state of bodily resist- 
ance, will be singled out as the catise of the disease. 
This same human partiality as determined by pur- 
pose operates in the singling out of causes in every 
other field of experience. A stone falls and hits the 
earth. Why did it fall ? The force of gravitation 
caused it to. But no ; the force of gravitation has 
been acting upon it for centuries, and it fell but 
now. Someone must have thrown it. That may be, 
but there is no one whom I can find near. Then 
its fall must have been caused by the fact that it 
was insecurely propped up above the earth's surface. 
And under like conditions it will fall again. Thus 
we work through all the range of experienceable 

[54] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

possibility until we come upon the reenactable fac- 
tor which would produce the result we seek, and, 
having found it, we say it is the cause. As a matter 
of fact, it is not tJie cause. The causes are so many 
that, if we attempt to describe them, we shall be 
utterly lost in bewilderment and confusion. But 
it is the cause that we are seeking, for our seeking 
is a singling and orders the confusion. 

Plato s doctrine that knowledge is not descriptioii 
bnt the pursuit of that which snakes men better. It 
is the definiteness of purpose which the seeker 
brings that results in knowledge. And this is a 
very old, though a commonly disregarded, doctrine. 
Do you remember how, in the tenth book of Plato's 
" Republic," having worked out the principles of 
comprehension, he returns to a consideration of the 
poets and his reasons for denying that they should 
be the educators of mankind ? They hold the 
mirror up to nature, and that is an easy way to get 
the seeming images of things, but they are satisfied 
with appearances only. " Hence we must inquire 
whether the poets are mere imitators, who have so 
far imposed upon the spectators that when they 
behold their performances, they fail to perceive that 
these productions are twice removed from reality, 
and easily worked out by a person unacquainted 
with the truth because they are phantoms, and not 
realities." " Concerning those grandest and most 

[55] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

beautiful subjects which Homer undertakes to treat, 
such as war, and the conduct of campaigns, and the 
administration of cities, and the education of man, 
it is surely just to institute an inquiry, and ask the 
question, thus: 'My dear Homer, if you are really 
only once removed from the truth, instead of being 
twice removed and the manufacturer of a phantom, 
according to our definition of an imitator; and if 
you used to be able to distinguish between the pur- 
suits which make men better or worse, in private 
and public ; tell us what city owes a better constitu- 
tion to you, as Sparta owes hers to Lycurgus, and 
as many cities, great and small, owe theirs to other 
legislators ? What state attributes to you the bene- 
fits derived from a good code of laws ? ' . . . Does 
the story go that any war in Homer's time was 
brought to a happy termination under his com- 
mand, or by his advice ? Is he reputed to have 
been . . . the author of a number of ingenious 
inventions bearing upon the useful arts or other 
practical matters, which would show that he was 
a man of wisdom in the affairs of life ? . . . Or did 
he personally conduct the education of disciples 
who benefited society and teach mankind a way 
of life ? " "... Does the painter understand how 
the bit and bridle ought to be shaped? Is it not 
the case that even the makers, the smith and the 
saddler, are ignorant on this subject, and only the 

[56] 



WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 

rider who knows how to use the things in question 
knows and understands it? . . . The imitative per- 
son knows nothing of importance about the things 
which he imitates, and therefore imitation is an 
amusement and not a serious business." Knowing, 
then, for Plato arises from use and is for use. 

But the heart of Plato's pragmatism is found in 
a passage in the Euthydemus: '''And what knowl- 
edge ought we to acquire ? ' May we not answer 
with absolute truth — ' A knowledge which will do 
us good ' ? ' Certainly,' he said. 

" And should we be any the better if we went 
about having a knowledge of the places where 
most gold was hidden in the earth ? ' Perhaps 
we should,' he said. 

" ' But have we not already proved,' I said, ' that 
we should be none the better off, even if without 
trouble and digging all the gold which there is 
in the earth were ours ? And if we knew how to 
convert stones into gold the knowledge would 
be of no value to us, unless we knew how to use 
the gold ? Do you not remember ? ' I said, ' I quite 
remember,' he said. 

" ' Nor would any other knowledge, whether of 
money-making, or of medicine, or of any other art 
which knows only how to make a thing, and not 
to use it when made, be of any good to us. Am I 
not right ? ' He agreed. 

[57] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

" * And if there were a knowledge which was able 
to make men immortal, without giving them the 
knowledge of the way to use the immortality, 
neither would there be any use in that, if we may 
argue from the analogy of the previous instances ? ' 
To all this he agreed. 

" ' Then, my dear boy,' I said, * the knowledge 
which we want is one that uses as well as makes.' " ^ 

1 Plato, Euthydemus (Jowett's translation), 288, 289. 



[58] 



CHAPTER III 

THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE^ 

What this doctrine has cost and why it sticks. If 
knowledge-getting is the wise and purposeful selec- 
tion from the infinity of facts and relations which 
exist of those which make a serious difference to 
life, it would seem that education owes its greatest 
duty to that process. But no, says one army of 
educators ; education's first duty is to form and 
not to inform the mind. This is the centuries-old 
doctrine of formal discipline. Of it we are indeed 
justified in complaining, as did John of Salisbury of 
the Nominalist-Realist controversy which absorbed 
the scholars of his day, that " more time has been 
consumed [by it] than the C^sars gave to the 
conquest and dominion of the globe, more money 
wasted than Croesus counted in all his wealth." 

We are told in the Scriptures that we should 
not put new wine into old wine skins, lest the wine 
skins burst and the wine be spilled, but there is 
another and even a better reason — the old wine 

1 For an extended discussion of this subject, see Thorndike, Educa- 
tional Psychology, Vol. II (Teachers College, New York), and Heck, 
Mental Discipline (John Lane Company, New York). 

[59] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

skins are not sanitary. They contain the elements 
of decay. The new wine that goes into them will be 
poisoned, and we who drink of it will die. Never- 
theless, this pouring of new wine into old bottles 
is one of the chief activities of education. This is 
due, it would seem, to the fact that those w^ho so 
zealously pour their life work in the service of edu- 
cation into the old and time-infected wine skins of 
formal discipline have no other bottles into which 
to pour it. Strangely enough, even that hardy com- 
pany of critics who a few years ago set about 
liberating the spirit of youth from the contamina- 
tion of this process did its work so imperfectly that 
the more unthinking lovers of the old bottles still 
conceive themselves to be justified in using them. 
Indeed, they are reassured by a belief that " recent 
careful investigations have shown that there is 
much in the doctrine of formal discipline." Nothing 
could be farther from the truth. But the critics of 
the doctrine, rather than its friends, are to blame 
for this, for they have stated their findings in such 
a way as to invite just this misuse of them. When 
Herbart undertook to reform psychology by cast- 
ing out the hypostatized entities called faculties of 
the mind, which scholastic ignorance, traditionalized 
by centuries, had erected to explain mental life, he 
made the mistake of continuing to use the old 
terminology of faculties to designate the new-found 

[60] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

activities which came to Hght when he tore away the 
scholastic rubbish. The result of his thus putting 
his new wine into old words was that it took the 
learned world half a century to discover that the 
wine was new, it tasted so like the old ; and though 
nearly a century has now elapsed, the bulk of man- 
kind has not yet discovered that it tastes and is 
different. Old words and phrases do not work well 
as provokers of new ideas. We shall not learn to 
think clearly about the behavior of mind until we 
cease to use such phrases as the intellect, the will, 
the emotions, the observation, the imagination, the 
vte^nory, the reason, etc. in our discussions, and be- 
gin with one accord to talk about knowing, willing, 
feeling, imagining, remembering, reasoning, instead. 
The acts we know and can recognize, but that 
there are mental organs set apart for the perform- 
ance of each one of them, as the eyes are for seeing, 
the ears for hearing, and the teeth for chewing, 
though it is an old doctrine, is not a true one. And 
now nearly a hundred years after it was found out 
to be untrue by the psychologists, this phrenology 
of mind is still a ruling superstition of education, 
and the implicit basis of a very large and important 
part of current educational theory and practice. We 
shall not learn to think clearly about education 
until we cease to becloud ourselves by using the 
word discipline. 

[6i] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

What is the doctrine of formal discipline? It 
seems to be an exceedingly elusive and slippery 
affirmation — a series of running changes to escape 
its critics, and of shifting meanings assumed one 
after the other to withstand the attacks which have 
been made upon it. There is no way to corner it 
and make it tell what it means and what it does not 
mean save by quoting the documents which discuss 
it. Writing in 1867, Professor Youmans has this to 
say about it : " The friends of educational improve- 
ment maintain that the system of culture which 
prevails in our higher institutions of learning, and 
which is limited chiefly to the acquisition of the 
mathematics, and of the ancient languages and 
literature, w^as shaped years ago in a state of things 
so widely different from the present that it has 
become inadequate to existing requirements. . . . 
As man is a being of action, it is demanded that 
his education shall be a preparation for action. As 
the highest use of knowledge is for guidance, it is 
insisted that our collegiate establishments shall give 
a leading place to those subjects of study which 
will afford a better preparation for the duties and 
work of the age in which we live. The adherents 
of the traditional system reply that all this is but 
the unreasoning clamor of a restless and innovating 
age, which wholly misconceives the true aim of 
higher culture and would reduce everything to the 

[62] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

standard of a low and sordid utility. They maintain 
that knowledge is to be acquired not on account 
of its capability of useful application, but for its 
own intrinsic interest ; that the purpose of a liberal 
education is not to prepare for a vocation or pro- 
fession, but to train the intellectual faculties. They 
therefore hold that Me^ital Disciplme is the true ob- 
ject of a higher culture, and that for its attainment 
the study of the ancient classics and mathematics 
is superior to all other means." ^ " Throughout our 
discussion thus far," writes Dr. Noah Porter in his 
"American Colleges and the American Public,"^ 
" we have assumed that certain studies may be of 
the greatest value for discipline which possess no 
other obvious and direct utility." And again : " But 
even on the theory that many studies are valuable 
chiefly as a gymnastic — ' the grindstone theory,' as 
Mr. Atkinson calls it — it deserves to be considered 
whether the mathematics are not carried too far 
for their highest efficiency in a general course; 
whether excessive tediousness and painful drudgery 
are not sometimes the effect of driving a class into 
too minute calculations or vexing them with mani- 
fold problems." But Dr. Porter's enthusiasm for 
" the grindstone theory " as applied to the clas- 
sics shows no such abatement. " Unless it can be 

1 Youmans, The Culture demanded by Modern Life, p. 2. New York, 1S67. 

2 New Haven, 1870. 

[63] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

decisively proved that the so-called useful studies are 
as efficient in their disciplinary capacity and effect, 
it forms no objection to a study that its acquisitions 
cannot be used." There is competent testimony as 
to its presence in Germany also, for the present em- 
peror in speaking of the defenders of the existing 
program in the classical gymnasia in 1892 said, " If 
anyone enters into a discussion with these gentle- 
men on this point and attempts to show him that 
a young man ought to be prepared, to some extent 
at least, for life and its manifest problems, they will 
tell him that such is not the function of the school, 
its principal aim being the discipline, or gymnastic, 
of the mind, and that if this gymnastic were prop- 
erly conducted, the young man would be capable 
of doing all that is necessary in life." ^ That this 
particular claim for certain studies has not been 
abandoned by our present-day molders of educa- 
tional opinion is made plain by Professor Shorey in 
the volume entitled " Latin and Greek in American 
Education " ^ : " Throughout this discussion I have 
taken for granted the general belief of educators, 
statesmen, and the man in the street, from Plato 
and Aristotle to John Stuart Mill, Faraday, Lincoln, 
President Taft, and Anatole France, that there is 
such a thing as intellectual discipline, and some 

1 Henderson, Principles of Education, p. 2S9. New York, 1910. 

2 The Macmillan Company. New York, 191 1. 

[64] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

studies are a better mental gymnastic than others. 
This, hke other notions of ' common sense ' is sub- 
ject to all due qualifications and limitations. But 
it is now denied altogether, and the authority of 
Plato, Mill, Faraday, or Lincoln is met by the 
names of O'Shea, Bagley, Home, Thorndike, Bolton, 
and De Garmo. Tastes in authorities differ." This 
is a singular, and by no means an edifying, method 
of arriving at a proper understanding of the point at 
issue. Would that Professor Shorey had confined 
himself to a discussion of " the due qualifications 
and limitations" to which this common-sense notion 
must be subjected. 

The harm that the doctrine works. The tragic 
aspect of the doctrine of formal discipline is that 
it is handed down by the colleges to the lower 
schools, and infects pretty completely all forms of 
education. Little children in the elementary grades 
are required to study much arithmetic that is ar- 
chaic, much grammar that is useless, much history 
that they do not understand, and much spelling 
that they will never again have occasion for, for the 
reason that these things forsooth develop and dis- 
cipline the mind. One by one in high schools and 
colleges this doctrine takes the new studies into its 
net, and little by little transforms them into apathy- 
breeding, mind-destroying treadmills. It is not an 
adjective that belongs to studies; it is a false use 

[65] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

to which studies are put. Any body of knowledge 
may be taught from the standpoint of formal dis- 
cipline. Its real human worth may be largely neg- 
lected, and a use which quite obscures its value may 
be sought in it. Some of the earlier champions of 
science as a school study made the mistake of com- 
mending it on the ground that it disciplines the 
mind as genuinely as the classics or mathematics 
do, and as a result science is very generally taught 
as formal discipline. So is manual training, so is 
literature, and so may history, commercial branches, 
domestic science, and even shop work be taught, 
unless we guard against this debasing of them. The 
statement is frequently made that it makes no dif- 
ference what you study so long as you study it well. 
If the content is of no significance whatever, as this 
statement implies, it must be the mental discipline 
and nothing else which gives the study value. Is it, 
then, any wonder that Mr. Dooley was constrained 
to reword this position to the effect that " it makes 
no difference what you study so long as you 
hate it"? 

The history of this doctrine. Let us glance at the 
history of this doctrine. As nearly as I can discover, 
it was Plato who first began to talk of principles 
in the soul, and in one place in the *' Republic " he 
defines faculties as " powers in us, and in all other 
things, by which we do as we do. Sight and hearing 

[661 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

I should call faculties. ... In speaking of a faculty 
I think only of its sphere and its result." ^ Plato 
throughout his writings is struggling with the im- 
possibility of making an old language lend itself 
to the needs of radically new ways of thinking, and 
must by no means be held to that literal definite- 
ness of imagery and meaning which subsequent 
thinkers have put into his conceptions. There is 
nothing, however, that I can find in his writings 
that leads to the belief that the book which Rous- 
seau called '* the finest treatise on education ever 
written " in any sentence propounds the doctrine 
of formal discipline. On the contrary, Plato's whole 
energy is devoted to emphasizing the overwhelming 
importance of the content of instruction. It is for 
that reason and for none other that he calls for the 
reediting of the poets. It is for that reason that 
he describes the perfect literary education after this 
fashion : " Even so, as I maintain, neither we nor 
our guardians whom we have to educate, can ever 
become musical until we and they know the essen- 
tial forms of temperance, courage, liberality, magni- 
ficence, and their kindred, as well as the contrary 
forms in all their combinations, and can recognize 
them and their images wherever they are found, not 
slighting them either in small things or in great, 
but believing them all to be within the sphere of 

1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 477. 

[67] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

one art and study. " ^ By essential forms ^ Plato 
means the " ideas." The Platonic ideas are the 
clear concepts or definitions which Plato's master, 
Socrates, had spent his life in searching for. Here, 
at any rate, they are concepts or ideas of the mind. 
In this and the other dialogues he defines them 
from the standpoint of mental content, as, for exam- 
ple : Courage is the preserving '' under all circum- 
stances that opinion about the nature of things 
to be feared and not to be feared in which our 
legislator educated them." ^ " Temperance ... is 
the ordering or controlling of certain pleasures and 
desires." ^ "It would seem, Adeimantus, that the 
direction in which education starts a man, will 
determine his future life." ^ " To the rulers, then, 
it is the first and greatest commandment of God, 
that there shall be nothing of which they shall be 
such good guardians and which they shall watch so 
intensely as the children, for what they find to be 
mingled in their souls." ^ " Then you are to con- 
ceive that we, too, were doing something like this, 
so far as we were able, when we were selecting our 

1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 402. 

2 What Plato means by this alphabet of life which he declares we must 
know as thoroughly as our A B C's, is I think made clear by answering the 
question, What are the essential forms of geometry ? 

2 Republic (Jowett's translation), 429. 

* Ibid. 430. 
5 Ibid. 425. 

* Republic (Bosanquet's translation), 415. 

[68] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

soldiers and training them in music and gymnastic ; 
you must suppose that we were devising nothing 
else than how with full conviction our men might 
best take the color of the laws, like a dye, in order 
that their opinion both about terrors and about all 
else, might turn out indelible, because their quality 
and their nurture had been appropriate ; and that 
the detergents of the soul, however fatal in their 
operation, might never wash away their dye, whether 
pleasure, more tremendous in its efficiency than any 
niter or alkali, or pain and fear and desire, stronger 
than all other detergents. It is this faculty, a safe- 
keeping through everything of the right and lawful 
opinion with regard to what is terrible and what 
is not, which I name and set down as courage, 
unless you say something against it." ^ 

Plato's theory of crime is " that the most gifted 
minds, when they are ill educated, become preemi- 
nently bad. Do not great crimes and the spirit of 
pure evil spring out of a fullness of nature ruined by 
education rather than from any inferiority, whereas 
weak natures are scarcely capable of any very great 
good or very great evil ? " ^ Education has no need 
to strengthen or develop or form such minds ; they 
are strong by nature ; but the " classical education 
which the Greeks got by the study of Homer and 

1 Republic (Bosanquet's translation), 430. 

2 Republic (Jowett's translation), 491. 

[69] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

Hesiod " is not sufficient to put their feet in the 
way of Hfe. The whole burden of Plato's criticism 
is that the content of the instruction upon which 
the Greeks relied was unsatisfactory. Even the 
idea of the good, the loftiest of all the mind's 
conceptions, is a mental content. " And the soul 
is like the eye ; when resting upon that on which 
truth and being shine, the soul perceives and 
understands and is radiant with intelligence." ^ 

But, you are perhaps saying, that is all very well ; 
nevertheless, when Plato came to outline his scheme 
of higher education he chose his subjects of study 
not for the sake of their content but because of 
their disciplinary value. It is true that he speaks 
of education many times as the process of directing 
the mind to " that upon which truth and being 
shine," that he would have Homer banished be- 
cause his ideas are so misinforming, that he would 
supervise every kind of artist and image maker so 
that only the breezes of beauty and health should 
blow over the children ; but see if he does not work 
out another conception of education than that it 
is the process of bringing the mind into contact 
with a profitable environment, when he discusses 
the subjects of the higher course of study. That 
course begins when the youth is twenty years of 
age. It lasts for fifteen years, the first ten of which 

1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 50S. 

[70] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 



are to be spent upon arithmetic, geometry, astron- 
omy, and music, and the last five in the study of 
dialectic. Why does Plato want them to study 
these subjects? 

First, there are four degrees of knowledge, and 
they form a ladder by which the soul may climb 
to the comprehension of the highest form of being 
— the comprehension of the good. We are invited 
to take a line and divide it into two unequal 
parts, thus : 



The invisible 
world 



The visible 
world 



then to divide each of these parts in the same 
proportion ; and to suppose that these main divisions 
represent one the world of sense, or the visible 
world, and the other the world of intelligence, or 
the invisible world. Then we are asked to compare 
the subdivisions of each in respect to their clear- 
ness or want of clearness. We may know the things 

[71] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

of the visible world either directly by seeing and 
sensing them ourselves, or indirectly by seeing 
pictures of them, reflections of them in mirrors, 
or in maps, descriptions, etc. This second kind of 
knowledge is less clear than the first, so it must 
be put below it in the first of the subdivisions of 
our diagram. Let us speak of this lowest kind of 
knowledge as the perception of shadows or copies. 
Above it will come the world of visible objects 
which we know by faith. In the lower form of 
knowledge of the invisible world we are concerned 
with things not seen, such as lines, points, circles, 
numbers, etc. These thoughts are suggested by 
things, but we get them only by abstracting one 
aspect from out the mass of qualities which unite 
to make up any object. These studies teach us to 
make those abstractions, to think about thoughts, 
not in general but in connection with a particular 
subject matter. The peculiarity of this kind of 
knowledge is that it assumes that there are lines 
and points and numbers, and proceeds to draw such 
inferences as it can from the assumption that they 
exist. The highest kind of knowledge inquires into 
the nature of these assumptions. It refuses to be 
hypothetical, but starting from certainty it advances 
to certainty through certainty. The hypothetical 
knowledge of geometry and arithmetic and such 
like studies is the work of understanding. And 

[72] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 



pure science unaided by hypothesis is the work 
of reason. Now we may fill the several spaces in 
our diagram : 



The invisible 
world 



Reason 



Understanding 



The visible 
world 



Faith 



Perception 



Science or knowledge 



Hypothetical knowledge 



Objects or things 



Shadows 



The training in music and gymnastic has in- 
formed us concerning the knowledge of the visible 
world. It remains for the higher education to 
inform us concerning the intelligible world. We 
begin with arithmetic, which is " a something which 
all the arts and sciences and intelligences use 
in common and which everyone first has to learn 
among the elements of education." ^ It is a study 
which leads to reflection. " Its true use is simply 
to draw the soul towards being." ^ " We must 
endeavor to persuade those who are to be the prin- 
cipal men of our state to go and learn arithmetic, 

1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 522. 

2 Ibid. 523. 

[73] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

not as amateurs, but they must carry on the study 
until they see the nature of numbers with the 
mind only." ^ Some of the things of sense do 
not invite us to think, while in the case of other 
objects the senses give us such untrustworthy re- 
ports that further inquiry is imperatively necessary. 
Sight cannot adequately perceive greatness and 
smallness, thickness and thinness, hardness and 
softness. Sense reports the same thing now asi 
hard, now as soft, now as light, now as heavy; the 
soul must summon intelligence and calculation that 
she may know whether the several objects an- 
nounced to her are two or one. When some contra- 
diction is " always present, and one is the reverse of 
one, and involves the conception of plurality, then 
thought begins to be aroused within us, and the 
soul, perplexed and wanting to arrive at a decision, 
asks ' What is absolute unity ? ' This is the way in 
which the study of the one has a power of draw- 
ing and converting the mind to the contemplation 
of true being." ^ Arithmetic compels the soul to 
reason about abstract numbers. For that reason 
it has a great and elevating effect. The mental 
operations which it invites us to perform are 
valuable forms of learning, but they must be 
supplemented by practice in learning the specific 

1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 525. 

2 Ibid. 524 (absolute unity = unity itself), 

[74] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

operations of geometry, which are different, as well 
as those of astronomy and of music. Plato does 
not claim for any one of these that they teach us 
to think, but only that they teach us to think 
arithmetically, geometrically, astronomically, and 
concerning music. No one of them is enough, and 
taken all together they are by no means enough. 
" All this is but the prelude to the actual strain 
that we have to learn. For you surely would not 
regard the skilled mathematician as a dialectician ? 
Assuredly not, he said : I have hardly ever known 
a mathematician who was capable of reasoning."^ 
Dialectic, then, which is the art of asking and 
answering questions, must be pursued for five years ; 
and even this is not enough, for those who study 
it must keep on educating themselves as long as 
they live. 

But if the pursuit of each of these studies con- 
tributes only its quotum of specific knowledge, 
what about such statements as that " even the dull, 
if they have had an arithmetical training, although 
they may derive no other advantage from it, always 
become much quicker than they would otherwise 
have been," ^ and " as experience proves, anyone 
who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker of 
apprehension than one who has not " ? ^ Are 

1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 531. 

2 Ibid. 526. 3 Ibid. 527. 

[75] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

they quickened because their minds have been 
sharpened and they have been trained to think? 
But Plato himself employs the statement, " I 
have hardly ever known a mathematician who 
was capable of reasoning." It must therefore 
be that they have been quickened in some other 
way. In what other way could they have been 
quickened ? My little girl does not know how to 
read, but she studies reading. I notice a great 
change in her. Before, when I asked her to look 
at a book she did so indifferently; now she takes 
it with alacrity. She has learned a new thought of 
herself; she is one who can find out things from 
books. Her alacrity is not there because her mind 
as a mind has been developed and is now a more 
perfect mind than it was before. It is due to the 
fact that she has found a specific method of attack, 
that she has learned how to use her mind and 
in one way found out that she can accomplish 
something by using it.^ 

Plato does not leave us so uncertain as this even 
as to what he regards as the task of education and 

^ That this is Plato's conception is, I think, borne out by the passage 
in 411 of the " RepubHc," in which he describes the ill effect of an educa- 
tion in gymnastic alone as follows : " And what happens if he do nothing 
else, and holds no converse with the Muses, does not even that intelli- 
gence which there may be in him, having no taste of any sort of learning 
or inquiry or thought or culture, grow feeble and dull and blind, his mind 
never waking up or receiving nourishment and his senses not being 
purged of their mists?" (Jowett's translation). 

[76] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

what his definition of education is. He is very 
definite about it. Hear him: "But then, if I am 
right, certain professors of education must be wrong 
when they say that they can put a knowledge into 
the soul which was not there before," as one might 
speak of inserting sight into eyes which have it 
not. " Whereas our argument shows that the 
power and capacity of learning exists in the soul 
already." ^ Shall we consider in what way our 
guardians are to be produced ? " The process, 
I said, ... is the turning round of a soul passing 
from a day which is little better than night to 
the true day of being." ^ That is, neither knowledge 
nor powers nor capacities which are not there 
already can be inserted in the soul from outside. 
The whole and sole business of education con- 
sists in directing the mind or turning it to the 
consideration of that which is important. 

Now though Aristotle, the great classifier, crystal- 
lized the different kinds of functioning of the soul 
into a somewhat more hard and fast doctrine of facul- 
ties, he did not speak of education as existing to form 
or develop them. He did say in the " Psychology " 
that " if imagination means the power whereby 
what we call a phantasm is awakened in us, and 
if our use of language is not merely metaphorical, 

1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 518. 

2 Ibid. 521. 

[77] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

then imagination is one of those faculties or men- 
tal forces in us by virtue of which we judge and 
are capable of truth and error. And those facul- 
ties include sensation, opinion, scientific knowledge, 
and reasoning." ^ But when he discusses educa- 
tion, his emphasis is wholly upon the impressions 
which play upon us in our earliest years. He 
agrees with his master, Plato, that the selection of 
the environment is education's main task. " Virtue," 
for him, " consists in rejoicing and loving and hat- 
ing aright"^; that is, in knowing what things 
to love and what things to hate. " The virtues we 
get by first performing single acts of working, 
which, again, is the case of other things, as the 
arts for instance ; for what we have to make when 
we have learned how, these we learn how to make 
by making. ... In one word, the habits are pro- 
duced from the acts of working like to them: and 
so what we have to do is to give a certain char- 
acter to these particular acts, because the habits 
formed correspond to the differences of these. So 
then, whether we are accustomed this way or 
that straight from childhood, makes not a small 
but an important difference, or rather I would say 
it makes all the difference." ^ 



1 Aristotle, Psychology, in Rand's The Classical Psychologists, p. 68. 

2 Politics, VIII, 5. 

* Aristotle^ Ethics (Chase's translation), Bk. II, Sect. I. 

[78] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

Even the Romans, who did so much to pervert 
the wisdom of the Greeks, seem to have taken the 
Greek notion of education as the process of bring- 
ing the mind of the learner into contact with the 
body of usable knowledge and letting him master 
it for himself as the proper conception of the 
teacher's function. In one place in the " Institutes 
of Oratory" Ouintilian distinctly refers to the doc- 
trine of formal discipline only to turn his back to 
it and to find other and better reasons for the prac- 
tice which he recommends. This is the passage : 
" As to geometry, people admit that some atten- 
tion to it is of advantage in tender years ; for they 
allow that the thinking powers are excited, and the 
intellect sharpened by it and that a quickness of 
perception is thence produced; but they fancy that 
it is not like other sciences profitable after it has 
been acquired, but only whilst it is being studied. 
Such is the common opinion respecting it. But it 
is not without reason that the greatest men have 
bestowed extreme attention on this science ; for as 
geometry is divided between numbers and figures, 
the knowledge of numbers assuredly is necessary 
not only to an orator, but to everyone who has 
been initiated even in the rudiments of learning. . . . 
The knowledge of linear figures, too, is frequently 
required in causes ; for law-suits occur concerning 
boundaries and measures. But geometry has a still 

[79] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

greater connection with the art of oratory Geom- 
etry proves what follows from what precedes, what 
is unknown from what is known ; and do we not 
draw similar conclusions in speaking? ... Of all 
proofs, the strongest are what are called geomet- 
rical demonstrations, and what does oratory make 
its object more indisputably than proof ? " ^ 

As nearly as I can discover, this view held 
throughout the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, 
and even when scholasticism flourished with all its 
metaphysical refinements it was usable know^ledge, 
or what passed for usable knowledge, which was 
the object of all instruction. Such was certainly 
the case in the Renaissance and in its Germanized 
child — the Reformation. The knowledge of the 
languages was necessary for the sake of purified 
religion. " They are the scabbard which holds the 
sword of the spirit." 

But when the Renaissance and the Reformation 
had been accomplished and new conditions brought 
new needs, the practice of education could not 
change rapidly enough to meet them. And so bad 
reasons had to be found for continuing to do that 
which w^as nevertheless done from habit and tradi- 
tion. The schools of the Jesuits may have done 
something to shape the new justification which 
was found for continuing the old studies, but Latin 

1 Quintilian (Watson's translation), Institutes of Oratory, Bk. I, chap. x. 

[80] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

was to them the language of a Hving rehgion, and 
they were under no such need to find reasons for 
their devotion to it as were Protestant school- 
masters. When Luther and his co-reformers sought 
to give the people of Germany a new religion by 
breaking away from the Latin Church, why did 
they not also break away from the Latin language 
and the traditional education? By doing so they 
would have made their separation more complete. 
The answer is found in the words of Melancthon, 
the organizer of the reformation school system: 
" Upon the parents, therefore, and upon the com- 
munity falls the common obligation of the educa- 
tion of the youth of your city. In the first place, 
they must take care that religion be rightly taught, 
and this implies as a necessary condition sound 
instruction in letters." ^ 

The Reformation rode in on the great wave 
of humanism. The reformers were humanists and 
were bitterly opposed to the medieval education 
whose chief study was logic. Scholastic Latin, 
scholastic disputing, and scholastic theology, in 
short the studies and methods of the scholastics, 
were all hateful to them. Not the Latin spoken 
by clerks, which had kept itself alive through the 
Dark Ages by adapting itself as a living language 

1 Melancthon, Inaugural Address at Nuremberg, 1526, in Woodward's 
Contributions to the History of Education, p. 224. Cambridge, 1906. 

[81] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

to the needs of men, but Latin of classical purity 
and a learning that enabled the scholar to leap 
over the ages of confusion back to the pure doc- 
trine contained in the source books of Christianity, 
became their ideal of education. Indeed, we may 
say that it was the Reformation which by refusing 
to have anything to do with the living Latin which 
had grown up through the ages of the Church 
made Latin a dead language. 

Humanistic Latin it continued to study because 
of its value to religion, since a large part of the 
literature of early Christianity had been written 
in it. But the growth of the native language, the 
rapid institutionalizing of the new religion, the 
claims of everyday life, and the increasing pressure 
of new studies which began to be shaped by vital 
interests took the heart out of the reformers' rea- 
sons for studying the classics. Luther and Melanc- 
thon had urged these studies upon the people in 
words which indicate that they aspired to make 
every man his own reformer of religion. This 
ambitious use of the classics in time ceased to 
be the active hope of the schoolmasters, and about 
the middle of the eighteenth century the German 
teachers of the old subjects begin to defend their 
work against the attacks upon it by the exponents 
of the new realistic studies, by the justification 
that they train the faculties of the mind. 

[82] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, and Christian Wolff 
in their writings made frequent reference to the 
faculties of the soul. Francis Bacon, in Section 974 
of the Natural History, says that " the brains of 
some creatures, when their heads are roasted, taken 
in wine, are said to strengthen the memory: as 
the brains of hares, brains of hens, brains of deers, 
etc." And speaking of the lack which he found 
in the exercises used in the universities, he wrote, 
"It is ever a true rule in exercises that they be 
framed as near as may be to the life of practice, for 
otherwise they do pervert the motions and faculties 
of the mind, and not prepare them." ^ 

Among the impediments to natural philosophy 
he notes the promises with which " light and vain 
men partly from credulity, partly from craft, have 
loaded the human race, offering promulgation of 
life, delay of infirmity, relief from pain, supply of 
natural defects, deceptions of the senses, the bind- 
ing or inciting of the affections, illuminations of 
the mental powers, ecstasies, transmuting of sub- 
stances, etc." ^ 

John Locke (1632- 1704) is sometimes referred 
to as the chief exponent of the theory that the true 
function of education is to develop the powers or 
faculties of the mind. " The business of education 

1 Bk. II, The Advancement of Learning. 

2 The Interpretation of Nature. 

[83] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

. . . is not, as I think, to make them perfect in any 
one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose 
their minds, as may best make them capable of 
any, when they shall apply themselves to it. If men 
are, for a long time, accustomed to one sort or 
method of thoughts, their minds grow stiff in it, 
and do not readily turn to another. It is there- 
fore to give them this freedom, that I think they 
should be made to look into all sorts of knowledge. 
But I do not propose it as a variety and stock of 
knowledge, but a variety and freedom of thinking; 
as an increase of the powers and activity of the 
mind, not an enlargement of its possessions." ^ 
" We should always remember that the faculties 
of our souls are improved and made useful to us, 
just after the same manner as our bodies are. 
Would you have a man write or paint, dance or 
fence well, or perform any other manual operation 
dextrously and with ease ? Let him have ever so 
much vigor and activity, suppleness and address 
naturally, yet nobody expects this from him unless 
he has been used to it, and has employed time and 
pains in fashioning and forming his hand, or out- 
ward parts, to these motions. Just so it is in the 
mind ; would you have a man reason well, you must 
use him to it betimes, exercise his mind in observ- 
ing the connection of ideas, and following them in 

1 Conduct of the Understanding, 19. 

[84] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

train. Nothing does this better than mathematics; 
which therefore I think should be taught all those 
who have the time and opportunity; not so much 
to make them mathematicians as to make them 
reasonable creatures." ^ Note that the question is 
begged here, for it is quite evident that one learns 
to fence only by practice in fencing and that that 
practice will not teach him to box or play tennis. 
Whereas Locke draws the conclusion that exercise 
in mathematical reasoning will make a man reason 
well, not only in mathematics but in all things. If 
we remember that the activities of mind " are im- 
proved and made useful to us just after the same 
manner as our bodies are," we will arrive at a con- 
clusion very different from his. Locke himself goes 
back on his own theory, for in his " Thoughts on 
Education " (176) he writes: " I hear it is said that 
children should be employed in getting things by 
heart to exercise and improve their memories. I 
could wish this were said with as much authority 
of reason as it is with forwardness of assurance, 
and that this practice were established upon good 
observation more than old custom. For it is evi- 
dent that strength of memory is owing to a happy 
constitution and not to any habitual improvement 
got by exercise. Is it not the same with the other 
faculties ? " 

1 Conduct of the Understanding, 6. 

[85] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

But every philosopher of that clay wrote about 
the "faculties of the soul." Charles Bonnet (1720- 
1 793) even named his book " An Analytical Essay 
upon the Faculties of the Soul." Thomas Reed 
(1710-1796) wrote on "The Intellectual Powers 
of Man," and Condillac's (17 15-1780) treatise was 
full of that doctrine. Nothing was more inevitable 
than that German Protestant schoolmasters when 
pressed for a reason for teaching the classics by 
their opponents, the philanthropists, — newly arrived 
champions of the practical studies, who succeeded 
indeed in discrediting the teaching of the old lan- 
guages, — should have lighted upon this one and 
speedily made it the chief defense of their practice. 
In this way a doctrine persistently rejected for 
hundreds of years by the great teachers of man- 
kind began to shape and preside over the educa- 
tional practice of the western world. The theory 
upon which it is founded that the mind is divided 
into faculties is relatively very old, but the use of 
the doctrine in education is new, going back no 
farther than the eighteenth century. 

When Friedrich August Wolf (i 759-1824), the 
founder of the science of philology, began to go to 
school, he found that he could not bear a teacher 
more than three days together. Yet his precocity 
was so great that before he was two years old he 
knew a number of Latin words, and by the time 

[86] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

he was eight, could read an easy Latin author 
and had made a beginning of Greek and French. 
As long as his father taught him, all went well, 
but as soon as school-teachers began to instruct 
him, his troubles began. As long as he lived he 
was possessed by the conviction that he had been 
mistaught. He devoted his life to reforming the 
teaching of the classics. They had been studied 
as a preparatory qualification for the study of law 
and theology. To him this was the meanest view 
that could be taken of them. They are supposed to 
be the road to literature and learning. This is a 
traditional superstition, though there was a time 
when it was true. He proposes a different reason 
for studying them. They afford the "knowledge of 
human nature as exhibited in antiquity." ^ 

But Wolfs successors have not taught the classics 
for the reason that Wolf taught and believed in 
them. They have made of them an instrument for 
another purpose than that with which he sought to 
check the rise of the new-found realistic studies. 
They have resorted to " the grindstone theory " 
and not the knowledge theory to justify their use 
of them. 

Is gy77tnastic training general or specific ? As we 
have seen, a warrant for this procedure is sought 
in the physical training of the gymnasium. The 

1 See Mark Pattison, Essay on F. A. Wolf. 

[87] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

mind must be exercised as the body is. Its powers 
must be developed as the powers of the body are 
developed. This is surely a justification by confu- 
sion. Has the physical trainer any exercises that 
train the body as a whole? In the " Banquet" of 
Xenophon, Socrates is made to say that " those 
who have accustomed themselves to long foot races 
have thick legs and narrow shoulders, while on the 
contrary the wrestlers have broad shoulders and 
small legs. Now instead of producing such an 
effect, in the exercise of dancing, the feet, the legs, 
the neck, and indeed the whole body, are in action, 
and whoever would have his body supple, easy, and 
healthful, should learn to dance." Again, we find 
him saying in the " Memorabilia," " Do you not 
know that those who are by nature the weakest be- 
come, by exercising their bodies, stronger in those 
things in which they exercise them than those who 
neglect them, and bear the fatigue of exercise with 
greater ease ? " The physical trainer exercises spe- 
cial muscles and combinations of muscles. He has 
no single exercises which develop all forms of skill, 
nor has he any single exercises which will develop 
the single organs in more than particular ways. 
One man he teaches to box, another to row, an- 
other to work on the rings or the horse. But one 
who has learned boxing has not thereby learned 
to play tennis or to row. It may even be that 

[88] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

knowing how to perform one of these feats is a 
hindrance to learning another. The so-called gen- 
eral exercises are only selected groups of particular 
exercises, and train the special muscles involved in 
them to work together in the particular ways that 
they require. All-round athletes are rare, and the 
feats which an all-round athlete is expected to per- 
form — the pentathlon and the dekathlon — are by 
no means exhaustive tests of muscular ability. To 
anyone who goes in for this sort of thing it is 
quite apparent that physical education leads only 
to the acquirement of special forms of muscular 
skill. It is true that the exercising of any com- 
bination of muscles calls for a correspondingly 
rapid blood flow to build up the broken-down 
tissue. The blood must be more rapidly aerated, 
and quickened breathing is the result. These in 
some measure benefit the whole body if the exer- 
cises are taken in moderation, though they may 
greatly injure the heart or the digestive and secre- 
tory systems if they are not. If any part of the 
brain is specially engaged in mental work, it would 
seem possible that a correspondingly rapid blood 
supply is distributed to that organ. Just what the 
details of the effects of physical training are is 
by no means clear, as the subject is exceedingly 
intricate and demands much more attention than 
has yet been given it. This much seems to be 

[89] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? ' 

plain, that there is really no such thing as general 
strength of body or even of any one of the organs 
of the body. Strength varies in proportion to habit- 
uation of muscles in working together to perform 
the different feats of skill. If one is to be a pianist 
or a surgeon, it is conceivable that he should not 
engage in perfecting the work of his larger mus- 
cles, as they might get in his w^ay and become 
not contributory but rival forms of skill, as walking 
is to an adult who tries to learn to swim. Physical 
skill is specific, and its variations are the more or 
less of specific activities. What we call general 
physical training is training in several specific 
forms of activity, and only by a figure of speech 
is it all-round training. 

Are there any faculties of the "inind? Let us 
look now at the faculties of the mind and inquire 
concerning the possibility of training or developing 
the judgment, the will, the imagination, the observa- 
tion, or the memory, each in general, that is, formally. 
Taking the last one first because the facts in re- 
gard to it are matters of everyday knowledge, we 
must first note that the psychologists tell us there 
is no such thing as a single organ or faculty of 
memory which can be trained as a whole. We have 
a different memory for everything we remember. 
Familiar experience tells the same thing. Some 
of us remember faces but not names, and some 

[90] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

remember names but not faces ; some the names of 
books, but not their contents, others the contents 
and not the names ; some remember the words of 
foreign languages, but others forget them as soon 
as learned. We know that we do not remember 
all things equally well, that our memories insist 
upon being partial and particular. We see the same 
thing in other people. I used to go from San Fran- 
cisco to Berkeley daily on " the racing boat," the 
ferry boat which took the crowds that followed the 
races over to the track. My neighbors were inter- 
esting folk, for they represented a high degree of 
specialization in education. They were people with 
marvelous memories for the names, the pedigrees, 
the performances, and the selling prices of run- 
ning horses. They seemed to recall all there was 
to be recalled about jockeys, weights, conditions of 
the track, etc. Their going-and-coming conversa- 
tion was so thickly charged with facts of that sort 
as to put to shame the sievelike memory of a poor 
student which at times seemed to refuse to hold 
anything at all. But suppose these same people, 
with their marvelously developed memories, had 
been thrust into a theological school and required 
to commit St. John's Gospel, the deeds of the 
saints, and the hymns of the Church, would they 
have succeeded any better than the rest of us ? Yet 
their memories were highly trained. 

[91] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

There were two students in the University of 
CaHfornia who set out to train their memories by 
committing the whole of Milton's " Paradise Lost," 
and one recent student at Cambridge, England, is 
said to have committed the whole of the Iliad. Do 
men who do these things remember the calculus, or- 
ganic chemistry, or the facts in Blackstone's " Com- 
mentaries " better because of forcing themselves in 
this fashion? John Locke thought not. Cardinal 
Newman thought not and spoke of having known 
men "who could without effort run through the suc- 
cession of days on which Easter fell for years back ; 
or could say where they w^ere, or what they were 
doing, on a given day in a given year ; or could recol- 
lect the Christian names of friends and strangers; 
or could enumerate in exact order the names of all 
the shops from Hyde Park corner to the Bank ; 
or had so mastered the University Calendar as to 
be able to bear an examination in the academical 
history of any M.A., taken at random. And I be- 
lieve in most of these cases the talent, in its excep- 
tional character, did not extend beyond several 
classes of subjects. There are a hundred memories 
as there are a hundred virtues." ^ Pathological cases 
have shown that the memory of one sense may be 
lost without that of the others being impaired. Pro- 
fessor James determined to test the matter. He 

1 Richardson, The Choice of Books, p. 79. New York, 1905. 

[92] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

first committed 158 lines of Victor Hugo's " Satyr." 
It took some part of eight days and a total time 
of 1 3 if minutes. He then trained his memory 
by working twenty minutes a day in committing 
" Paradise Lost," and finally committed the first 
book. He then went back to Victor Hugo's 
"Satyr" and found that to commit 158 additional 
lines 15 1 J minutes were required, or twenty min- 
utes more than before training his memoiy by 
committing the " Paradise Lost." He admits that 
during the second test he was fatigued by other 
work. But four of his students repeated the test. 
Two of them showed considerable gain after prac- 
tice, and two none at all. Professor James stated 
it as his conviction that the native retentiveness 
which we bring with us at birth cannot be changed. 
''All improvement of the memory lies in the line 
of elaboratinor the associates of each of the several 
kinds of things to be remembered. No amount of 
culture would seem capable of modifying a man's 
general retentiveness."^ Every so-called method of 
training the memory is simply a method of study- 
ing the facts to be remembered — a better method 
of going to work to associate them with other facts 
etc. " When schoolboys improve by practice in ease 
of learning by heart, the improvement will, I am 
sure, be always found to reside in the mode of study 

1 James, Psychology, Briefer Course, pp. 296-298. New York, 1900. 

[93] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

of the particular piece (due to the greater interest, 
the greater suggestiveness, the generic similarity 
with other pieces, the more sustained attention, 
etc.), and not at all to any enhancement of the 
brute retentive power." ^ This distinction helps us 
materially to locate the kind of discipline of the 
memory which is impossible and tells us definitely 
what we should attempt to do instead. We are to 
let the memory alone and to bend our energies to 
the proper comprehension of facts which are worth 
remembering. It is the content and not the form 
of memory which is to be trained. 

Ca7t the memory be trained? Now come the 
critics of Professor James's view who, though their 
investigations have not materially changed his re- 
sults, have sometimes talked and written of them 
as though they had and, by so doing, have brought 
confusion instead of clearness and lent an unwar- 
ranted degree of comfort to the enemy. In 1905 
Ebert and Meumann published the results of elab- 
orate and seemingly thoroughgoing tests of eight 
subjects who were first measured by being required 
to commit a miscellaneous assortment of letters, 
numbers, nonsense syllables, words, Italian words, 
strophes of poetry, and bits of prose. Next they 
undertook to determine which methods of learning 
were most economical. In the investigation they 

1 James, Psychology, Briefer Course, pp. 296-298. 

[94] 



THE DOCTRINE OE GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

learned thirty-two series of nonsense syllables, ordi- 
narily learning two series of syllables on one day 
and testing the retention of two more. This went 
on for sixteen days, at the end of which time the 
first material was relearned and the results before 
and after training were compared. Four of the sub- 
jects went through a further period of training by 
means of sixteen additional series and the original 
condition was then again compared. The tables show 
that there was a gain in each case. " The results," says 
Professor Pillsbury, " fell out entirely in favor of the 
view that special training gives a general effect."^ 
Professor Dearborn, who repeated Meumann's ex- 
periments with great care, found no evidence of 
general memory training in his results. Professor 
Pillsbury also quotes the experiments of Winch on 
school children in Great Britain, in which about 
one hundred children learned selections from a 
historical reader and were then divided into two 
groups, one group being trained for four mornings 
by committing about one hundred words of poetry, 
while the members of the other did sums. On the 
fifth morning each group committed a second test 
passage, and it was found that the members of 
the group which had been trained did this on 
the average about ten per cent better than those 
who had worked the sums. But what do these tests 

^ Latin and Greek in American Education, p. 367. New York, 191 1. 

[95] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

show? Do they not show improvement in memo- 
rizing a particular kind of material by learning a 
particular method of study and increasing one's in- 
terest in doing a particular kind of thing, rather 
than improvement of the me7nory in general} The 
percentage of gain reported by Meumann in the 
third test over the first is 59 in the case of num- 
bers, 42 in the case of nonsense syllables, and only 
29 in the case of prose words. This does not seem to 
mean that " general strength " of memory has been 
developed, but rather that several particular interests 
have been improved markedly, and independently, 
by training. If " general strength " is developed by 
training a given faculty or function, have we not 
a right to demand that that " strength " shall be 
general, that is, available in nearly equal measure 
for all related kinds of use ? All the experiments 
show that it is not, and in them all we have what 
seems very much more like a readaptation of a 
method than the repetitive functioning of a de- 
veloped organ. Again, what are claimed as general 
results are of so little value that, even if they were 
clearly made out, education could not consider 
them as of any importance whatever, and certainly 
would not be warranted in shaping its work to 
get them. The results seem to confirm Professor 
James's view that all so-called improvement of the 
memory is improvement in method of studying. 

[96] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

Dr. Fracker found that practice in committing the 
order of four tones led to improvement in the com- 
mitting of poetry. So did committing the order 
of presentation of four shades of gray, of nine 
shades of gray, of nine geometrical figures, of nine 
numbers, and of the extent of arm movements. His 
conclusion is that his results accord with those of 
Professor James, " inasmuch as all the factors we 
have discovered have to do with methods," that is, 
with ways of learning that are specific and com- 
mon to both the test and the practice operations. 

The questio7i of the tra7isferability of training is 
not the question of formal discipline. The question 
as to whether or not a method of study or mental 
action learned in one context can be applied to a 
recognizably similar problem is not the question 
of formal discipline. The mind is a generalizer. 
We are never called upon to apply what we have 
learned to just the same conditions as those in 
which we learned it. If the method called for is 
the same and the context in which it was learned 
is sufficiently like the context which presents the 
problem to call it forth, there will undoubtedly be 
a transferring of what was learned in the old situa- 
tion to what is required in the new. The whole 
theory of habit supports this view. We tend to 
repeat the motions we have already learned, when- 
ever the situation is not too confusing to allow us 

[97] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

to do so; but let the situation be very novel, and 
even our most deep-seated habits refuse to function 
well in it. I can walk a ten-inch plank with ease 
on the ground ; but let it be put fifty feet in the 
air, and I find it nearly impossible to walk along 
it. Undoubtedly much is transferred from my prac- 
tice of walking on the ground to the new situation 
in which I find myself compelled to walk high in 
air; but he would indeed be a foolish thinker who 
would maintain that the art of walking is one and 
of such a kind that, having once learned it, one can 
walk anywhere. While there are common elements 
in all walking, they do not of themselves help me 
to walk along a wire. To master that situation I 
must be specifically trained for that kind of walk- 
ing. It is the same with talking. It is one thing 
to talk well in the bosom of one's family, and quite 
another to talk well in the presence of strangers, 
and still a third thing to talk well in making a 
public speech. And so different are these arts that 
few orators have been conversationalists and few 
conversationalists orators. 

The numerous psychological experiments which 
have attempted to determine the limits within 
which what is learned in one context can be 
applied to another are valuable as showing the 
conditions under which the mind functions as a 
generalizer. But have not the men who reported 

[9B] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

them confused two questions which ought to be 
kept clearly separated — the first, Is there such a 
thing as a general, or wholesale, training of the 
faculties or functions of the mind ? and the second, 
To what extent is what is learned in one context 
applied in a similar one ? The first question is 
answered not by finding out to what extent gen- 
eralization goes on, but by finding out whether it 
can go on at all without faculties and without com- 
mon contexts to call it forth. In other words, the 
acceptance of the fundamental doctrine of modern 
psychology, that there are no faculties in the mind, 
of itself necessitated the abandonment of the doc- 
trine of formal training in education. The coming 
of the day when no teacher uses this hoary super- 
stition to justify his teaching has actually been 
postponed by experiments undertaken to show to 
w^iat extent a common element may function in 
different fields of learning. 

Is judgment one? It is hardly necessary to apply 
a similar criticism to the training of each of the 
so-called faculties. If judgment were one, it could 
perhaps be trained as one. But men who think 
equally well upon all kinds of subjects are not to 
be found. "It is said," writes Professor Angell, 
" that education ought to train one's ability to exe- 
cute analyses, to make accurate inferences, and to 
detect essential relations, as though analyses and 

[99] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

inferences and relations were names for perfectly 
homogeneous, uniform processes. The futility of 
this conception in the form in which it is often 
advocated requires no psychology more recondite 
than that afforded by common observation and a 
very modest type of common sense. If the world 
were built in a neat snug-fitting box, with all parts 
interchangeable, the scheme ought to work admira- 
bly. Unhappily the type of analysis and inference 
which is valid in mathematics, for instance, is prac- 
tically very different from that which is valid in 
linguistics and history. A similar discontinuity of 
inferential procedure marks off from one another 
sundry other fields of knowledge. Surely from this 
side the most that educational doctrine can ask or 
urge is that the mind shall be brought into con- 
tact with all of the great characteristic divisions of 
human thought and that the processes in each of 
these domains shall be made familiar. . . . Psy- 
chologically, of course, the various forms of reason- 
ing process reduce to one or two simple types 
with their variants. But practically the content of 
the ideas with which thought has to deal is often 
so diverse as to render discipline gained on this 
score in one direction of only the most remote 
consequence in another." ^ Reasoning, then, is a 
specific rather than a general activity. 

1 Pillsbury, Latin and Greek in American Education, p-357- New York, 191 1. 

[100] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

Is there a facility of observation or of hnagina- 
tion ? The observation is another faculty which 
we are urged to train, but good observation seems 
always to be a function of the particular content 
that one has been habituated to observe. Take 
three trained observers out to observe the same 
landscape. Let one be a real-estate dealer, one a 
railroad-constructing engineer, and one a landscape 
artist. Can they possibly see the same things in 
the landscape ? Yet each is a trained observer. 
One sees with the ideas which are in his mind, 
with his apperceptive system, and it is only by 
developing that that his eyes can learn to see 
what they should see. 

Imagination also cannot be trained as one. It too 
is a function of the content. First, it is divided into 
rather well-marked types, which are by no means 
interchangeable, so that a person of a markedly 
audile type is hardly warranted in attempting to 
substitute another type by training. Then within 
each type we have a different imagination for each 
thing that we image. Here again the counsel of 
psychology to education would seem to be to let 
the imagination alone and put its efforts upon secur- 
ing clear pictures of those matters and concerns 
which should be clearly registered in the mind. 

It is the same with attention. It is primarily 
selective. We attend to those things which interest 

[lOl] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

us, which are problems for us, which belong to the 
line of goods we carry. It is, in each of us, not one 
but many, and always the result not of an abstract 
but of a series of concrete developments. To quote 
Professor Angell again : " So far as these several 
forms of attention have divergent elements in them 
(and certainly there are many such divergences both 
of sensory content and of motor attitude) we shall 
hardly be entitled to look for beneficial effects in 
the use of one form of attention as a result of dis- 
cipline in another form of it." And so with all the 
other mental and moral virtues. They are not gen- 
eral but obstinately particular. What, then, is the 
net result of all this? What but that we must 
abandon all talk and claim of general mind-forming, 
and gladly accept the more humble task of mind- 
informing. The several studies provide not oppor- 
tunities for general training, but each of them its 
own peculiar opportunities for special training. 
The opposite of formal training is content training. 
Each study offers its content of facts profitable to 
be known, and its content of methods of dealing 
with those facts. But both its methods and its facts 
belong to its content and are valuable only when 
taken together. We may teach them broadly or we 
may teach them narrowly, and, unless our pupils are 
inventive geniuses of the rare sort, they will not 
get from our teaching much more than we invite 

[I02] 



THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

them to get. To my mind the most suggestive of 
all the experiments upon this subject which have 
been reported is the modest effort of Professor 
Bagley, which showed that the children who were 
instructed to hand in neat arithmetic papers did 
so, but did not improve their geography and lan- 
guage papers a bit. But when Professor Ruediger 
enlarged the lesson and took pains to impress upon 
similar children the need for neatness in preparing 
all their papers, neatness began to characterize 
them all. Must we not teach concretely what we 
would have our students learn, and abandon all 
confidence in the mystical power of studies? 



[103] 



CHAPTER IV 

EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

Our worlds are different. The world of the man 
who is born bHnd must be strikingly different from 
the world of the person who sees. The same land- 
scape stretches before him that stretches before 
us, but he lacks something. Other folks experience 
the infinitely varied play of light and shade, but he 
cannot know them nor objects as defined by them. 
Others cannot by verbal descriptions, even the most 
perfect, impart their experience to him. How it 
feels to see he can never know, and how one gets 
along without the aid of visual images with which 
to define a world of things will be an incompre- 
hensible mystery to us as long as we have them. 
The world of the deaf must be a queer, still world, 
which we who love the sound of voices and of 
music cannot know. The deaf and the blind make 
their world out of another sort of stuff than that 
which we build into ours. Yet when we think of it 
they are but striking cases of a common law. All 
our experiences are private and particular. My see- 
ings, hearings, touchings, tastings, smellings, are 
my own ; the ether vibrations which stimulate them 

[104] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

in mc have not reached your retina ; the sound 
waves which fall upon my ear have not broken 
upon your tympanum. Your seeings and hearings 
are yours ; mine are mine. Though we do have 
similar senses we do not have the same sense 
material, and the worlds which we construct from 
it differ accordingly. It is a commonplace that the 
soldier's world is different from the sailor's, the 
farmer's from the lawyer's, the Eskimo's from that 
of the dweller in the tropics, the Chinaman's from 
the American's, the youth's from the man's, the 
child's from the adult's. The experience stuff with 
which each one builds is peculiar to himself, and 
the scheme of things which each of us carries 
about with him is different from the scheme of 
things which every other man possesses. 

Our feeliJigs are not transferable. My world may 
have points of identity with other people's worlds. 
How thoroughgoingly we view matters in the same 
way is nevertheless very hard for us to tell. We 
are each of us shut off by ourselves. Our feelings 
are not interchangeable; there is no process of 
telepathy by which you can pass your weariness, 
or hunger, or suffering, or conviction, or joy to me. 
In this horrible year (191 5) when more individuals 
are in agony than ever before in the history of men 
one sometimes wakes with a start of astonishment 
that his own body does not quiver with pain from 

[105] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

their gunshot wounds or their gnawing hunger. 
It is true their suffering makes us suffer, but our 
suffering is not of Hke kind with theirs. When 
they are struck down we do not feel the flash of 
agony that shoots through them. 

This relentless privacy of experience in which we 
are shut up forces us to struggle desperately to 
make our inner being known. But all our efforts at 
direct communication are unavailing. I can never 
be sure when you say the stone is hard or the 
toothache hurts that you have quite the same kind 
of feeling when you strike the stone or suffer from 
the toothache that I have. I can never sample 
your pain and match it with my own. I can only 
watch your acts and from them reason — if I acted 
so it would be because I felt thus. If my nearest 
friend tells me that he believes in a certain course 
of action, I can only watch to see what he does 
to find out if his belief is real. If he avows that 
he is convinced by the proof which I show him, I 
must wait to see how he acts before I can be sure 
whether he is or no. The evidence that we have 
experience in common is always indirect, is our 
community of action. Oneness of thought does not 
manifest itself in any other way. We may agree in 
words, yet there would be a marked decrease in the 
number of lawsuits which are brought to trial if our 
minds had actually united in the understandings 

[106] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

concerning which they were in nominal accord. One 
can hardly have Hved through the events of the 
last year without having had his faith in community 
of human intentions when evidenced by a common 
language wrested away. Speech is a very inexact 
revealer of our feelings, convictions, and purposes. 
Our words go out; our thoughts remain with us. 

Our common world a social construct. We talk 
about the world as though it were an existence 
which had revealed itself in the same way and 
almost to the same extent to each one of us. Yet 
our personal experiences of it are various, frag- 
mentary, confusing, and fall far short of that one- 
ness of objectivity to which our words seem to 
refer. Two persons who look at the same object, 
or listen to the same music, or read the same book, 
do not have the same experience of them though 
they may talk as though they had. Each one takes 
the matter as it appears to him and attaches to it 
the significance or meaning which his past expe- 
riences enable him to supply. " No two persons 
have quite the same experience even of a rose- 
bud," says Professor Lloyd Morgan in his lectures 
on " The Interpretation of Nature." We do not 
start with one fixed world of objects which each of 
us finds ready-made and mirrors perfectly, carrying 
about thereafter a little film or image of it in his 
mind, the same kind of an offprint of it which his 

[107] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

neighbor has. Knowledge-getting is not a process 
of copying. It is a process of constructing. The 
consternation-making fact is that we do not start 
with a common world of things, the perfect mirror- 
ing of which by our minds would make each of us 
know one and the same world. We start with see- 
ings, hearings, touchings, tastings, smellings, which 
are peculiarly our own, dissimilar to those of others 
to a degree, wholly nontransferable ; and out of 
this manyness of feeling we proceed to construct 
common centers of reference, and cooperative ways 
of procedure which we name by common names 
and come to regard as demanding of us a more or 
less common and established system of reactions. 
Our own experiences have a reality which is imme- 
diate and compelling. Other people's experiences 
exist for us only in so far as w^e can put ourselves 
in their places, interpreting their acts in terms of 
our own feelings. The world which we speak of 
as common to us all is a social construct, the world 
of our discourse, of. our common action, a unity of 
operation. It is a part of the world which our own 
private feelings tell us about, but they tell of much 
more than it. We start with diversified experiences 
and work toward the identities of objects mutually 
understood, not from the unity of one and the 
same set of objects to the diversity of conflicting 
individual interpretations of them. 

[108] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

Mechanical education due to a false philosophy. 
Nothing can be more devastating to the work of 
education than false notions of what the process of 
knowledge-getting is. Most teachers assume that 
the universe of ready-made objects is given, that 
we must start from it. Knowledge-getting consists 
in allowing such parts of it as we want to know 
to impress themselves upon the receptive mind. 
"Here is the world," they say, "look at it"; or 
" Here is wisdom — learn to repeat its words." 
The whole dreary soul-destroying business of me- 
chanical education, which has existed century after 
century and in most of the schools of every coun- 
try of the world, is due to this mistaken philosophy 
of knowledge. We are active beings, it conceives 
us as passive ; we are made to see with our own 
eyes and hear with our own ears and understand 
and construct with our own understandings, but 
this philosophy of education robs us of our birth- 
right by hindering us from using our own senses 
in gathering experiences and our own minds in 
constructing these sense feelings into a self-made 
world, for it attempts to substitute for these natural 
and meaningful experiences of the self, familiarity 
with the words of other men. 

How does the child 7nake his world? Let us go 
back to the child and ask him how he builds his 
world. He is born, as each one of us was, with 

[ 109 ] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

that mysterious power of awareness which tells us 
all that we know or ever shall know about the 
existence of anything. All that we say is or is 
not has revealed its existence or its nonexistence 
to men through this medium. Whatever we talk 
about, think about, hope, fear, and expect, whether 
it belongs to the past, to the present, or the future, 
comes to us in this guise. To say that a thing — 
anything — is is merely to employ a shortened form 
of expression for the thought that someone is aware 
of it, that it has revealed its being to some mind. 

The child, we say, brings into the world with 
him this marvelous potency of having experiences 
and a nervous system with its complement of sense 
organs, eyes, ears, organs of touch and smell, and 
nerve endings for tasting. He is born among men 
who have been living a long time and who have 
learned to distinguish the various kinds of feelings 
which they have had, to separate hard from soft, 
harmful from helpful, safe from dangerous, to draw 
a thousand other lines of division between the parts 
of their awareness, to combine these parts into 
clusters of feelings and to project them into a 
world of ordered things, and thereupon, by using 
the feeling of a single sense as the evidence of 
associated feelings which have been grouped with 
it, they have learned to order their anticipations 
accordingly. He is born with the same potency to 

[no] 



1 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

have experiences that they started with; he must 
learn to make distinctions in the same way that 
they did. He must experiment for himself and out 
of his own experience build up his own notions of 
things. Their greater knowledge enables them in 
some degree to select experiences for him, that is, 
to put him in the way of having them; but their 
experience will not stand proxy for his any more 
than their health releases him from the necessity 
of maintaining his own. If we were scrupulously 
careful we would not, I think, say of this child that 
he must learn to live in the world \ we would say 
instead that he must learn to live the world. 

Of all this as yet he knows nothing. If we place 
a lighted candle in front of him, put a bitter sub- 
stance in his mouth, or make a loud sound near 
him, he will not seem to note them, for when new- 
born he responds but feebly to all kinds of stimuli. 
The feelings which we call smell, taste, touch, hear- 
ing, and sight, and which to us are the signs of 
things, seem in him to be quite dull and vague at 
first. His lips and tongue are the most sensitive 
parts of his body. He is quite helpless to keep his 
arms from moving and utterly unable to control 
his muscles. But by the twenty-third day Preyer's 
son followed a moving candle with his eyes and 
turned his head in order to do so. The organism 
now begins to be mature enough to start upon that 

[III] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

seemingly most exciting of all careers, the reach- 
ing for what one sees, the tasting of what one 
touches, and the tearing and flinging about of all 
that one's hands fall upon that the mouth refuses. 
The senses now are wdde-awake. There is endless 
agitation of eyes, hands, and mouth in carrying on 
their awkward sampling of surroundings. What a 
curious jumbled awareness must that be of which 
they are the bodily counterpart! Professor James 
has described it as " one big blooming buzzing 
confusion." " That confusion," he declares, " is the 
baby's universe; and the universe of all of us is 
still to a great extent such a confusion, potentially 
resolvable, and demanding to be resolved, but not 
yet actually resolved into parts." The process of 
learning, therefore, which we each begin at birth 
and are bound to continue until we die is a process 
of bringing order out of the chaos of our own con- 
fused impressions, of noting distinctions in feelings 
which at first were only vague and indeterminate, 
and of systematizing these reports of feeling into 
a world of articulated things. We always start with 
a vague experience, and out of it step by step we 
carve the parts which need demands — an order 
of procedure just the opposite of that process of 
beginning with clear-cut things and elementary 
parts and putting them together into wholes which 
education is commonly conceived to be. 

[112] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

He must make his notions of all that exists. The 
child does not start with things which he finds 
ready-made and has only to look upon and men- 
tally photograph ; things of that well-defined sort 
exist only for adult minds and are the results, not 
the beginnings, of a long process of experience. 
The things of our world are unknown to him. He 
has to begin at the beginning and make his notions 
of all that exists. You and I know that the candle 
flame will burn us if we touch it. He has to burn 
his finger to find out what sort of a thing it is. 
Hold up an orange before him. It is the first time 
that he has ever seen one. What will an orange be 
to him? He will be aware of yellow, though he will 
not know it by that name or distinguish it clearly 
from other experiences of color. The outline he 
will hardly get. To be aware of its shape, weight, 
and texture he must take it in his hand. He can- 
not have a feeling of its taste until he bites into it. 
He is so set up when he comes into the world 
that he binds together the reports of these different 
senses and makes one thing out of them. Hence- 
forth the look of the orange will suggest the taste, 
the shape, the weight, and the texture which he 
has found can be gotten from a thing with that 
sort of a look. 

Lang2cage not a substitute for experience. There 
are two points to be noted : first, the thing which 

[113] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

ever after he will know as an orange he has built 
up out of his own several kinds of experience of 
it — no amount of verbal description of it could 
possibly have given him this knowledge. Language 
cannot impart experiences ; that, perhaps, is the 
reason why we do not name things. But language 
can call up within us experiences which we have 
already had and can help us to understand their 
meaning and organize them in such ways as to 
anticipate coming experiences and so control them. 
Language is all conceptual, and concepts as we 
have seen are not existences but workings which 
we perform upon existences. " Percepts without 
concepts are blind, and concepts without percepts 
are empty." Facts, information, and information 
studies are useless because we have learned to do 
nothing with them. They report what once existed 
but is now dead. The knowledge of them does not 
help us to get ready for anything like them which 
we must expect will come again and must get ready 
for. But principles, laws, kinds, are recurring ex- 
periences, and knowledge of them will help us to 
get ready to handle instances of them when they 
arise. 

The second point is that if language cannot give 
us experiences but can only help us to work with 
or interpret those we already have, we must each of 
us go on building up our notions of the particular 

[114] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

things which make up our world as long as we live 
in just the same way that the child builds up his 
notion of the orange. Sense experience gives us the 
only knowledge which we have of individual things. 
To know them we must handle them, turn them 
over, pull them to pieces, and work with them, as well 
as look at them. If we once get this experience 
of them, we can apply it to everything else of that 
kind, but without it our knowledge of kinds is only 
empty words. Language enables us to work with 
experiences — it is not a substitute for them. No 
one can make either percepts or concepts for 
another person. Each of us must work them out 
for himself. But others can aid us immensely by 
putting us in the way of doing that and by chal- 
lenging us to do it. The necessities and the oppor- 
tunities with which they surround us in order that 
we may learn to use our own minds must provide 
opportunities for both perceptual and conceptual 
experience and construction on our part — oppor- 
tunities both for learning the nature of concrete 
things at first hand and for organizing our expe- 
rience of them by classifying them into kinds, and 
working out summary statements, principles, rules 
or laws concerning their behavior. Object lessons 
in which the student makes the acquaintance of 
real things either in the classroom or by means 
of excursions, workshops, laboratories, practice 

[115] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

work, or investigations privately undertaken are as 
indispensable a feature of education as the lessons 
which assume a concrete knowledge of a subject 
and proceed to help the student to systematically 
conceptualize the percepts which he already has. 

The world otitside and the world iJiside, It is 
interesting, I think, to go back for a moment to 
the child and to ask him for some further details 
of the process by which he builds his world. In 
the first place we must repeat that all that either he 
or anyone else ever knows about himself or about 
anything else is by means of his awareness. Noth- 
ing exists either for him or for anyone except as 
it reveals itself in his consciousness. It is not 
things but things experienced that make up our 
world. Is the grass green, the apple sour, the rose 
red, the night dark each to itself? Before there 
can be any color there must be an eye upon whose 
retina ether waves are vibrating at rates of from 
392,000,000,000 to 757,000,000,000 per second. The 
lower are the red rays, the upper the violet rays, of 
the spectrum. But these rays do not penetrate to 
the brain ; they stop at the retina. To it they com- 
municate some kind of change, and this in turn it 
communicates to the brain and produces a feeling 
which we call seeing. Air waves vibrating at rates 
of from 16 to 40,000 per second break upon the 
tympanum and communicate their motion to the 

[1.6] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

fluids of the auditory canal. They do not penetrate 
to the brain, but the changes in our feehng which 
ensue we call hearing. The sense of touch too pro- 
vides its quota of feelings of a peculiar quality. It 
begins to be active almost as soon as the eye is, 
and like the eye each of these senses produces at 
first but vague, suffused, and nonlocalized feelings. 

Awareness as yet is not separated into two parts 
— awareness of self and awareness of things. The 
world which begins as a blur must be dichotomized 
into internal and external, subjective and objective. 
This distinction is introduced within experience by 
a slow and never completely effective process. The 
instincts which the child brings w^ith him make 
his eyes partial to moving things. The hand is a 
moving thing ; the eye follows it in its explorative 
movements and sees it as it touches the object. 
They learn to work together. Touchings and see- 
ings now are related. This leads to an expectation 
that when one of them is experienced the other 
will be. The look of things can now make us aware 
of their hardness or softness, their weight, shape, 
size, and probable distance from us. 

But when one touches any part of his body the 
feeling is very unlike that which attends the touch- 
ing of things which are not his own body. When 
one's hand touches his body the hand reports a 
feeling of touching and the body one of being 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

touched. These are called the feelings of active 
and of passive touch. The eye of the child sees the 
hand touch the object and at the same time feels the 
touch ; but when the eye sees it touching the body 
the hand feels what it touches and what is touched 
also feels that it is being touched. Henceforth 
whatever feels the hand when it touches belongs 
to myself, and whatever does not is different. Thus 
the vague of feeling is split in two — into internal, 
or my own body's feelings, and external, or things 
experienced without letting me know in the same 
way that they are being experienced. In this way 
our awareness begins to be divided into two great 
irreconcilable hemispheres which no matter how far 
we incline to thrust them apart are but distinctions 
introduced within our total awareness. 

Each sense furnishes 7naterial for construction. 
The other sense feelings are in the conspiracy from 
the first. If we but stop to count out all the things 
which our world would not contain had we been 
born stone deaf, we begin to appreciate how large 
a part of it we make out of the feelings which we 
call our experience of sound. Smell also provides 
material for construction into things. Mr. Bradley 
conceives it to be the sense which supplies experi- 
ences of reality to the dog; so that, he thinks, the 
dog's logic can be written in one sentence — " What 
smells is real, what does not smell is nothing." It 

[Ii8] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

would seem that these feehngs have a diminishing 
usefulness to man, though it is quite unlikely that 
he will ever be able to get along without them. 
The poet who wrote 

Smells are surer than sounds or sights 
To make your heartstrings crack. 
They start those awful voices o' nights 
That whisper, " Old man, come back." 

refers to a fact in us which is as deep-seated even 
as our animal nature. We make a peculiarly vital 
part of our world out of these feelings, and their 
recurrences recall to us the most poignant and 
penetrating of experiences. That taste also supplies 
bricks for our world building is shown by the fact 
that this word has become a general designation for 
experiences which are acceptable and which when 
it is coupled with the adjective bad are regarded 
as unfit for human use. 

Our experiences of temperature furnish us a 
basis for dividing the earth into zones and for 
determining the desirability of its parts for human 
habitation. They also shape our very anticipations 
of the future world. Our philosophies of conduct 
and our schemes of punishment and reward we 
construct in terms of pleasure and pain. If our 
nature were different how different a world we 
would know ! With other sense organs we should 
have a different universe. 

[119] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

We arrange our experiences in a temporal ajid 
spatial order. Time and space we seem simply to 
find, not at all to make. Yet if awareness lasted 
but for an instant, and each instant then passed 
utterly away so that no trace of it remained, and 
a completely new instant took its place, would 
there be any such thing as time ? If our minds 
were like a camera in which one plate is exposed 
for a moment and shut off, and a new plate is 
then exposed, would there be any experience of 
time ? Is there any such thing as time for the 
camera plates ? My clock is ticking on the mantel- 
piece. I call it a timekeeper. Does it really keep 
time? Every tick vanishes before the next one 
begins. It must be that they do not know each 
other, that it is I who keep the tick that has gone, 
and the one that is going, and the one that is com- 
ing, and the one that will follow it, in mind. It is 
I who hold the parts of the series together and 
make them a series, just as I hold the tones of 
the instruments together and make music possible. 
Without this remembering of the past after it is 
past, and this relating of it to the present and of 
both of these to the future, there would be no such 
a thing as the time we know. 

It is one thing to have this peculiar kind of 
awareness and quite another to employ it in con- 
structing an elaborate time-ordered world. Men 

[I20] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

experienced time perhaps for what we now call 
hundreds of thousands of years before they ar- 
ranged events by time tables, or had a care to dis- 
criminate the seasons or retain the order of the 
years. Even the eager-minded Greeks do not seem 
to have had much success in constructing a calen- 
dar, and the greatest historian of antiquity, Thucyd- 
ides "avoided dates as far as he could, and made 
his years consist merely of a long summer and a 
short winter." ^ If it were possible to look into the 
minds of men to see what kind of a world they 
have constructed for themselves, it is likely that 
in no respect would such shocking diversity be 
found to obtain as in their arranging of experiences 
in time. Beyond a narrow immediate present to 
which we relate the recent past and the close com- 
ing future, events of which we are aware do not 
tend to organize themselves in a well-outlined time 
series. The work of making a world whose past 
is articulate calls for a difficult constructive effort 
which the student himself must undertake. He 
must make his own organization of history or 
suffer the penalty of living in a world with very 
narrow horizons and of confused and disorderly 
happenings. 

1 See the very interesting article on " The Discovery of Time," by 
James T. Shotwell in The Joiir^ial of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific 
Methods, under date of April 15, 191 5. 

[121] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

It is not otherwise with space. If we arc con- 
strained to think of it as something we see and do 
not construct, let us ask what our experience of 
space would be if the horizon-bounded picture 
which spreads before us whenever we look out upon 
the world were to disappear utterly from conscious- 
ness as soon as we turned away from it to look at 
another object; if through life one visual picture 
succeeded another, but always the first one com- 
pletely passed away so that we never knew but one. 
Would such a notion of space as we now have be 
possible then? Do not our minds make it by put- 
ting beside the visual field of our perception the 
visual field of our memories and on the other side 
the visual field of our anticipation ? And is it not 
necessary for the child to build up his notion of a 
space world by persistent efforts of the same sort 
as he must employ in making for himself a world 
whose parts are arranged according to a time order ? 
In all of this we must remember that no matter 
what things are about him, nor what historical 
facts have preceded him, nor how widely the uni- 
verse stretches out before the gaze of those who 
have already constructed a well-ordered image of 
it, that none of these things will avail him at all 
until he himself can experience them. Education 
concerns itself not with things but with our experi- 
ences of things. If in any single case the learner 

[122] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

fails to experience the thing which it sets before 
him as needful for him to know, the instruction 
has in so far been a failure. 

How persons are distinguished from things. As 
yet we have said nothing of the world of persons, 
but have been calling all the groupings which his 
feeling enables the child to make " things." It is 
time to make a distinction, a distinction which even 
little children are led by their feelings to begin to 
make as soon as they are two or three months old. 
Something different goes on inside the small child 
when a stranger comes into the room and takes 
him in his arms from what goes on when his 
mother or nurse handles him, and something very 
different goes on inside him when his mother or 
nurse comes into the room and takes him in her 
arms from that which went on before when no 
person was in the room and the cradle was hold- 
ing him. The smallest infant but a few days old 
gives clear evidence of having one awareness for 
persons and another awareness for things. Its feel- 
ing of hunger gives place to contentment, of chill 
to warmth, of fixity in one position to the relief of 
changed positions, when mother or nurse comes 
in. A social sense may not be necessary to explain 
its awareness of persons; if it exists it would but 
help the other changes in its feelings to group 
themselves about their cause. This first stage, in 

[123] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

which awareness is more aware of persons than of 
surrounding things, Professor Baldwin has called 
" the projective stage in the growth of the child's 
personal consciousness." In its cradle the baby 
watches its mother and singles out her goings and 
comings for special attention. Little by little he 
is getting control of his muscles and teaching his 
hands and mouth, and eyes and hands, and finally 
his eyes and legs to work together. What is so 
natural as that he should continue this process by 
making his hands, his face, and finally his legs 
repeat or imitate the movements that he sees ; and 
so when the ministering body smiles at him he 
smiles back, when she waves her hand he tries to 
do so, too. Finally he begins to imitate the copy 
by standing erect and walking. But all these new 
acts bring new stresses and strains, and each in- 
volves new feelings which are particularly vivid 
when he thus tries to perform a new act. 

How he makes the notion of self. This purposive 
striving makes him aware of himself, and thus we 
reach the subjective stage in the growth of the 
self-notion. But the feeling of waving my hands, 
of trying to make sounds like the sounds I hear, 
of walking like other folks, which lead me first to 
know myself, must be like the feeling which that 
other body has when it waves its hands, makes the 
sounds which I try to make, and walks as I try to 

[124] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

walk. So " the subjective becomes cjcctivc ; that is, 
other people's bodies, says the child to himself, 
have experiences in tJicni such as mine has. . . . 
The ' ego ' and the ' alter ' are thus born together. 
Both arc crude and unreflective, largely organic, 
and the two get purified and clarified together by 
this twofold reaction between project and subject 
and between subject and eject. My sense of myself 
grows by imitation of you, and my sense of your- 
self grows in terms of my sense of myself." ^ 

IVe make ourselves in the image of our cnviron- 
vient. The truly remarkable thing is the thorough- 
ness with which we make ourselves out of the 
experiences which we have of the people around 
us. Young cocks, it is said, do not learn to crow, or 
young dogs to bark well, or young canary birds to 
sing well, if they are prevented from hearing their 
elders perform these feats. And so very plastic is 
the young child that, in the very few cases in which 
he has been brought up by animals, it is said that 
he became an animal, going on four feet, eating 
raw meat, and clawing and tearing his way through 
life, much as his foster parents had done while he 
was among them. Be this as it may, Plato, Aris- 
totle, and Quintilian were quite justified in believ- 
ing that speech is shaped and character largely 

1 Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development, 
p. 15. New York, 1906. 

[125] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

formed in the earliest years, and upon the model 
which mother or nurse provides. And Freud and 
Jung seem amply warranted in believing that it 
is the experiences of our earliest years that give 
the character a permanent bent throughout life. 
At any rate, though we continue to make ourselves 
in the image of the persons with whom we are 
familiar, and to return the compliment by making 
them in our image as long as we live, this is the 
period in which we go about it most vigorously, 
the period when it comes nearest being the sole 
business of life. After these years we tend to put 
our capital to work to buy and sell experiences 
with it, and later on to live on the interest which 
it brings. 

The struggle with iizstitutions for existence. The 
child then is born into a world of persons, and sent 
into life so made up that he constructs his acts 
and, consequently, his feelings upon the models 
which they furnish him. But not only does he in- 
herit the racial instincts of the human family; he 
inherits also the racial environment which his for- 
bears have been preparing for thousands, perhaps 
even for millions, of years before his coming. Was 
it not Napoleon who said, "It is not man who 
lives, but institutions " ? At any rate, it is not true ; 
for it is only men that live, though they may indeed 
allow the dead hand of their ancestors to shape 

[126] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

their lives for them to the extent of becoming 
mere phantoms of the past. Thus Hfe is not only 
a struggle for food, clothing, and shelter, but a 
never-ending struggle to determine whether men 
themselves shall live or institutions shall live for 
them. 

One of the chiefest of these institutions is lan- 
guage. The child is caught up into its network 
of ready-made distinctions and racially established 
meanings almost before he leaves his cradle. Up 
to this time he has been busily engaged in mak- 
ing his world out of his own feelings. Now he 
perforce becomes a nominalist and is invited to 
name things instead of experiencing them. Thus 
language tends to substitute ready-made sounds for 
felt experiences, knowledge about things for knowl- 
edge of them. It turns us over to a world of hard- 
and-fast things which are not to us meanings, but 
every one of which has been constructed by our 
ancestors out of their feelings in just the same way 
that the child has thus far constructed so much 
of a world as he has succeeded in making. But 
language opens to him a new world of meanings, 
we say; it helps to make thought definite. Yes, 
that is true, but there is grave danger in it also. 
The child who is merely told about things cannot be 
said to experience them ; he is not getting the race's 
knowledge of them. Indeed, "because concepts 

[127] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

without percepts are empty," he is being kept 
from a knowledge of them. This process becomes 
the more destructive when the relatively imperish- 
able memory of written and printed books pre- 
vents the normal death of tradition. By their 
means definitions are kept alive, meanings have 
force, and conventions and traditions rule long 
after the occasion for their existence has disap- 
peared. It is thus that the letter killeth and only 
the spirit which makes the letter is alive. Recall 
that remarkable story which Plato tells in the 
"Phcedrus." It contains a warning. " At the Egyp- 
tian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god 
whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called 
the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor 
of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation 
and geometry and astronomy and draughts and 
dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. 
Now in those days the god Thamus was the king 
of the whole country of Egypt ; and he dwelt in 
that great city of upper Egypt which the Hel- 
lenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself 
is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth 
and showed his inventions, desiring that the other 
Egyptians might have the benefit of them ; he 
enumerated them and Thamus inquired about 
their several uses, and praised some of them and 
censured others, as he approved or disapproved of 

[128] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

them. It would take a long time to repeat all that 
Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the 
various arts. But when they came to letters, This, 
said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and 
give them better memories ; it is a specific both 
for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied, 
O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor 
of an art is not always the best judge of the utility 
or inutility of his own inventions to the users of 
them. And in this instance you, who are the father 
of letters, from a paternal love of your own children 
have been led to attribute to them a quality which 
they cannot have ; for this discovery of yours will 
create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because 
they will not use their memories; they w411 trust 
to the external written characters and not remem- 
ber of themselves. The specific which you have 
discovered is an aid not to memory, but to remi- 
niscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but 
only the semblance of truth ; they will be hearers 
of many things and wall have learned nothing; 
they will be a tiresome company, having the show 
of wasdom without the reality." -^ 

The functio7i of language. Now, whatever edu- 
cation may do, it must provide the reality of wis- 
dom, not its husk merely. It must recognize the 
fact that know^ledge of the word is not knowledge 

1 Plato, Phsedrus (Jowett's translation), 274, 275. 
[129] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

of the thing, and that to know the word is a 
matter quite other tlian to experience its meaning. 
Neither spoken nor written language can convey 
perceptions or thought, and neither in conversation, 
speeches, lectures, nor books do we impart them 
to each other. They cannot be handed about any 
more than toothaches or headaches can. Each 
person must make his own thought for himself; 
no one else can make it for him. I open a book. 
Is there any thought there ? Not a bit, there are 
only little black marks upon a white page. If I 
am unfamiliar with that particular system of marks 
I can make nothing out of them. I cannot even 
make them into sounds. I go to a lecture. Does 
any wisdom pass from speaker to listener there? 
No ; sound waves are vibrating the air. They fall 
upon my ear and I may be able to make some- 
thing significant out of them, but if they are parts 
of a sound system which I do not know, I cannot. 
Again, the words may be familiar but the thought 
be strange. The speaker may be talking about 
the geometry of ^^-dimensional space, and, while I 
can make something out of every separate word, 
I can make no clear meaning out of his sentences 
or his discourse as a whole. I could, of course, 
learn to repeat his words after him, but I would 
still not know his meanings because I cannot make 
them in terms of my own experience. 

[130] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

No, language does not convey thought, and in- 
struction cannot convey or supply knowledge. 
Plato was right. It is not something which can be 
thrust into the mind from outside like turnips into 
a turnip barrel. Conversation, lectures, and books 
may challenge us to think, provoke, invite to, or 
occasion thought, but they cannot supply it. Yes, 
you perhaps are saying, we admit that one must 
keep his eyes open and his ears attentive or he 
can appropriate nothing. While that is true, that 
is not what I mean. 

Knowledge getting is not appropriating. I am 
trying to say that knowledge-getting can never be 
an appropriating any more than health or skill in 
boxing can be. One cannot learn to box unless he 
himself parries and gives the blows. One cannot 
have health except as health results from what he 
himself does. Just so, one cannot have knowledge 
unless he makes it for himself. You converse with 
me. I hear your w^ords, but I must supply mean- 
ings for them out of my stock of experiences. I 
study Euclid's geometiy. It is simply an occasion 
for me to make my own geometry. I must con- 
ceive a point, a line, a plane, a solid. I must be 
persuaded of the unprovable truth of the axioms 
and must postulate the postulates. I must appre- 
ciate the force of geometrical proof. I must feel 
the necessity of regarding the sum of the angles 

[131] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

of a triangle as two right angles. I must make all 
the truths of geometry out of my own conviction. 

The process is the same in kind but not in 
degree in the case of every form of learning. It is 
sometimes said that Shakespeare shares his truth 
and Raphael and Bellini their religious and poetic 
insight with us, that the meaning of history and 
geography we do not make, but simply take. Can 
this be true ? If Shakespeare shares his meaning 
with us, w4iy do some say that Hamlet was mad 
and others that he was not mad ? To Shakespeare 
he must either have been mad, or not mad, or 
both together, and if we simply take Shakespeare's 
meaning it must be only one of these three that 
we can hold, and Hamlet should mean the same 
definite personality to us that he did to Shake- 
speare. There would be no room for scholars' quar- 
rels if truth were handed down to us in that way. 
But note that in the case even of Bible truth 
making so overshadows taking that the sects of 
Christianity are almost as numerous as those who 
ate of the loaves and the fishes. Again, if we do 
not make, but only share Shakespeare's perception 
of the truth of Hamlet, how does it happen that 
every actor who essays that great role gives us 
his own interpretation of it ? It must be that each 
makes his own conception of Hamlet out of the 
signs which Shakespeare set down to serve as 

[132] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

material for our construction. What Shakespeare's 
Hamlet was we shall never know, for the lines do 
not provide us enough clues to enable us to answer 
all our questions. The far greater service that he 
has rendered, the service every artist, inventor, 
lawgiver, and teacher renders, is just the one that 
my friend renders when he converses with me; 
namely, that of providing materials of experience 
for me to interpret, not with the hope that our 
meanings will coincide, but that starting upon some- 
what the same quest and each using the appercep- 
tive material which past experience has enabled 
him to acquire, we shall each of us create a mean- 
ing which will be of value to us. The artist, ac- 
cording to Tolstoy, is one who can so use his 
material as to beget in the spectator the conscious- 
ness or awareness that he himself desired the spec- 
tator to experience. He comes to each one with 
a challenge, " See in this, if you can, the meaning 
which I see in it." Thus the interpreter is a poet 
no less certainly than the poet whose words he in- 
terprets. Their difference is in degree of creative 
ability and not that one is a taker and the other 
a giver. 

History is what we inake of the past. When we 
come to history the same truth holds. What is 
the history of Greece? Is it a something that we 
merely find ready-made and which therefore we 

[133] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

must take and keep just as we found it, or is it a 
quarry to which each of us may go for many blocks 
of marble from which to shape the edifice of expe- 
rience w^hich he is building? Grote went to it for 
one purpose, Shelley for another, and Keats for a 
third. Professor Porson's purpose was very differ- 
ent from theirs. Each selected what he would, and 
each tells us what the Greeks were in terms of his 
interest. The absolute history of the Greeks can 
never be written. We shall have to be satisfied 
with the relativists' account, which is only another 
way of saying that the wn-iting of history, like the 
studying of history, is a form of human creating. 
The student knows that to answer the question, 
Wherein were the Romans a different kind of 
people from the Greeks ? he must first compre- 
hend the import of the question and must then 
hunt for and select the passages in history w^iich 
suggest the answer, and not only must he read his 
own meaning into the print which he finds in the 
library but he must assemble particular experiences 
of contrasting types of people. All of which leads 
him to shape some sort of more or less definite 
images, which he clothes, the one with one set of 
meanings and the other with the other, and calls 
the one the Greeks and the other the Romans. 

In our study of geography it is particularly plain 
that each of us is engaged in building a world 

[134] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

image. The notion that we must, for the sake of 
comprehension, begin with the famiHar experiences 
of home geography verifies that statement of our 
process. 

Education is world building. Education, then, 
we may regard as the process by which w^e make 
the " big blooming buzzing confusion " of feehng 
with which we started into an arranged world of 
things, each of which is a grouping of more or 
less definite feelings, a " permanent possibility of 
sensations." 

This process has been going on for years when 
the child first comes to school. He has been ex- 
periencing at first hand both things and persons, 
and his feelings of them have already been pretty 
well schematized. Perceptual experience he has 
had in abundance, and from the first he has been 
grouping it into kinds or concepts. What must 
now be done? A number of things. His first-hand 
perceiving must go on to the end of his days, and 
his classifying of his experiences into kinds must 
go on, too. But now he must learn to analyze his 
percepts and pick out those parts of them which 
will give him most control over his experience 
getting. The letters which he sees are black have 
a certain size as well as a certain shape and order; 
but he must learn to neglect their color and their 
size and fix his seeing upon their shape and their 

[135] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

grouping in order to learn to read. The objects 
which he numbers, too, have size, weight, color, 
smoothness, or roughness. But he must learn to 
disregard these aspects of them in order to see 
them as ones and deal with them from the stand- 
point of numbers. He must learn to think about 
things in new and usable ways, and he must learn 
to think about thoughts. But in all this it is out 
of his own feeling that his world is to be built, 
and he only can do the building. We are prone 
to think that textbooks and teachers and schools, 
if they are but good enough, can do that work 
for him — that his learning can be conferred upon 
him from the outside. Forsooth, does not Shake- 
speare give us our poetry, Euclid our geometry, 
Darwin our biology, and somewhat less distin- 
guished men our other forms of knowledge ? The 
notion is a popular one, and the view opposed to it 
has clothed itself in such thought-obscuring phrases 
as that education is a process of self-activity or 
of self-realization, with the result that the crude 
mistaken notion almost holds the field. 

The function of the school. But if each one of 
us must do his own w^orld building for himself, 
must see with his own eyes, hear with his own 
ears, image with his own imagination, classify 
according to his own purposes, and be convinced 
of logical necessity through his own feeling of 

[136] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

conviction, can the school do anything that is really 
worth while for him ? If he must do all his learn- 
ing for himself, why send him to school at all? 
The answer, and so far as I can see, the only answer 
which can be given to this question, is that the 
school can do only one thing — it can offer a care- 
fully selected environment in reaction to which the 
learner will use his owm mind in socially profitable 
ways. The teacher is the chief factor in this social 
environment. He represents society's insistence 
upon order, w^ork, and accomplishment. He is by 
no means there as a purveyor of knowledge but 
as a fellow worker in the search for socially profit- 
able ways to use the mind. It is repeated over and 
over again that the teacher must be a model to the 
child, and by this is usually meant that the teacher's 
moral conduct must be a model ; but what the 
phrase really means is that the teacher must fur- 
nish an example of interest in knowledge-making 
and in the use of mind in solving the problems 
of human life. If he would have his students use 
their minds in the developing of their bodies, in 
the shaping of their conduct or in the making of 
other forms of knowledge, he must lead the way. 
Again, the subjects of study upon which teacher 
and pupils are engaged are only a series of chal- 
lenges to think out the social experience which 
they formulate and to find out, each by the use 

[137] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

of his own apperceiving experience, if what they 
declare is not so. They present social experience 
through the medium of textbooks, each of which 
is nothing but a book of texts, presented in sym- 
bols for which the students are to make meanings 
and about which they are to weave their own 
texture of experience, both sensory and motor, in 
much the same way as does the preacher in his 
efforts to expound his theme. 

The use of workshops, laboratories, problems, the 
preparation of papers, the taking of examinations, 
together wdth devices for student self-government, 
etc. — all are but efforts to provide an environ- 
ment in which the student shall work out his own 
experience into more usable capitalized forms. 

According to this conception "education is not 
for life, but it is life." It cannot be a preparation 
for life without being life. A specially selected en- 
vironment the school must be, but an environment 
selected from life itself and not made out of another 
kind of needs, problems, surroundings, and demands 
than life itself presents. Artificial to a degree it 
must be, but artificial in the same sense that the 
family and the state are artificial ; that is, that they 
are human arrangements for doing the real work of 
the world and not devices for superfluous tasks 
which could just as well be done without. 

From this standpoint the school is the " green 
[138] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

meadow " wherein there are " samples of lives," and 
the teachers are the guardians of the " samples of 
lives." The generations, as they are born, advance 
to the meadow and, with the assistance of the 
teachers, each one selects the life which appeals 
to him most and goes upward " to live it a hundred 
years." But it is his own life that he selects, his 
own world of meanings that he here is allowed 
special opportunities to reflectively interpret. De 
te fabula narrahir is the form in which every 
discourse must be addressed to him. And what 
is sought must ever be his own interpretation, his 
own insight, his own making of values. 

Education, then, is the process by which the in- 
dividual continues the preschool activity of getting 
experience and working it over by reflection into 
terms of social utility. It is a process which he 
does not begin in the school and cannot end 
when he leaves the school. It is essentially the 
life process and the work of life. Plato was right, 
therefore, when he spoke of education as a life 
work. Experience must continue to function in 
the getting of new experience, and old experience 
must continually be reinterpreted to meet new 
experience. The process of learning must be kept 
up ; without that, even the capitalized experience 
of facts and methods of handling them, which 
we have thus far succeeded in accumulating, will 

[139] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

slip away, for one cannot acquire any form of 
skill and discontinue it without in large measure 
losing it. It is not surprising, therefore, that some 
young people forget how to read four or five years 
after leaving school, that others forget how to add, 
and still others how to write or to spell. There 
is no known way of teaching any form of action 
so that the person who has once learned it will 
continue, without further effort, to be able to 
perform it as long as he lives. There is only one 
form of insurance against the lapsing of one's ac- 
quirements, no matter what they are. They cannot 
be wrapped in the napkin of forgetfulness and 
carefully laid away. They must be put to use. The 
schools which regard education as a result and not 
as a process raise false hopes in the minds of their 
students. In reality they have to do only with the 
apprentice stages of each of the forms of activity 
with which they are concerned. They have a duty 
to make it particularly clear to all who come under 
their instruction that they cannot enable one to 
acquire permanent habits, or a knowledge which 
will not run away, if special efforts are not made 
to continue the process of interpreting experience 
which the student has only begun. 

On the other hand, one cannot be a master 
workman in any field without engaging himself 
in a constant effort to enlarge his knowledge of 

[140] 



EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 

that field. My professor of ethics used to say that 
" the good man who merely repeats his goodness 
of the day before is not a good man, but a bad 
man." The good teacher or the good physician or 
the good carpenter who merely repeat their good- 
ness of the day before are not good but bad work- 
men. Why? Because every day is a new day with 
its new demands upon us, and we must grow in 
grace and likewise in knowledge in order to meet 
them. There is no form of knowledge so complete 
and final that it cannot be improved, no single 
human art so perfect that it cannot be made better, 
no form of human endeavor that does not call for 
further effort. For this philosophy, life is a perfect- 
ing, not an arriving at perfections, and the joy is 
in the process, not in reaching and remaining at 
a goal. 



[141] 



CHAPTER V 

THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

The only kind of education. If our analysis is 
correct the only kind of education that there is 
is self-education. It is not a thing of fixed sub- 
jects of instruction. No one study and no partic- 
ular group of studies is indispensable. Neither is 
attendance at any particular kind of school, though 
the likelihood is a bit greater that if one has sur- 
rounded himself with inducements to study he will 
be a little more certain to study because of them 
than in their absence. It is a true saying, how- 
ever, and worthy of general credence, that "many 
are exposed to an education but few take it." 

Education is the process by which each individual 
out of his own awareness builds his world. No one 
can see, hear, taste, touch, smell, walk, or talk for 
the child. He must do all these things for himself. 
Just so, no one can image for him, remember 
for him, think for him, will for him. But human 
beings have been so busily engaged in doing these 
things before he came, and have so successfully 
recorded the experiences which they have had in 
doing them, that he seems to be surrounded by 

[142] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

a world of ready-made existences and meanings 
which require no building up through constructive 
experience on his part, but only appropriation. Just 
what images are in the minds of those who advance 
the notion that education is appropriation it is hard 
to make out. Yet educators do sometimes talk 
as though they believed the child was freed from 
the necessity of learning to walk because the race 
has walked, or the necessity of seeing, handling, 
and experimenting with what the race has, out of 
such experience, learned to call objects because it 
has given them names, or by trial and error to find 
out how to conduct himself because the race has 
already learned by experimenting how to conduct 
itself. This conception of education views it as 
a body of results to be imparted without going 
through the processes which lead to them. When- 
ever education is conceived in that fashion, an 
impossible task is undertaken, and an outcome of 
no profit but of positive harm, both to the learner 
and to society which attempts to teach him thus, 
is inevitable. 

The nature of our social inheritance. Must each 
learner then begin at the very beginning just as the 
race did and rediscover all that it has discovered 
for himself? Is it of no advantage to him to be 
born late in the course of civilization ? Shall he 
not profit by what has already been found out? 

[143] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

Certainly he will profit and profit greatly, yet not by 
appropriating results merely but by appropriating 
results through their processes. 

Our social inheritance is an inheritance of meth- 
ods. The wise invite us not to see with their eyes 
or to think with their minds, but to look with our 
own eyes and to think with our own minds upon 
those matters of great concern to men with which 
they busied themselves and in their experimenting 
found profitable ways of treating them, standpoints 
of advantage, and methods which may lead to con- 
trol. Professor Baldwin has made a distinction of 
first-rate importance in designating the world which 
we are born into as our social inheritance. To be 
born into a German family does not mean that one 
brings with him a structural tendency to learn the 
German language, but it does mean that he inherits 
an environment in which he must learn to com- 
municate in German. His situation provides a par- 
ticular form of activity for his mind to work in. 
German does not come to him without his laying 
hold of it w^ord by word and sentence by sentence. 
He is the inheritor of a way of speaking. He can- 
not well escape communicating with those about 
him in the words which they use, but to do so he 
must reinvent the language because of their occa- 
sioning him to do so. He inherits the race's knowl- 
edge in the same way. It is to him but a language 

[144] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

which he must learn to use if he would communi- 
cate with his fellow men and have their help in 
living. It comes to him not as a fixed body of 
ready-made truth which he can take without cre- 
ating. It is only an occasion, an opportunity, and, 
to an extent, a necessity for his own mental activity. 
His mother spoke in German, and showed him the 
way and put him under the necessity of developing 
a system of meanings for her sound symbols and of 
himself using a similar system of sounds. Instruc- 
tion in language, literature, science, history, or phi- 
losophy can do nothing more ; they are simply 
invitations to him to perfect his own awareness, 
suggestions as to problems that the race has met 
in its course and which he will most likely meet in 
his, and intimations of ways in which he will find 
it profitable to attack them. He may learn this 
language of the sciences just as he may learn Ger- 
man with degrees of mastery. He may be able to 
repeat its words without feeling their meanings. 
He may be able to read it without being able to 
write it, or to understand it without uttering it. He 
may collect a great store of curious and interest- 
ing facts about it and not be able to use it, or he 
may be able to think in it and to speak it. But 
the prime fact about the language is that it was 
made to think by and to speak with, and this is 
the prime fact about all forms of human learning. 

[H5] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

They are tools. They were made for use. That is 
their reason for being. No matter how much cus- 
tom and convention may overload them with other 
meanings, use is their sole reality. 

What the task of the educator is. The task of the 
educator is a strange one. He must so act upon 
others that they will feel, think, and act for them- 
selves. What he himself does, no matter how per- 
fectly, is never the end which he seeks. The 
instruments with which he works — the knowledge 
which the race has already attained — are not the 
end either. Like himself and his acts they are 
but means also. The feeling, the conviction, the 
reaction of the man inside the learner, is the one 
thing needful, is the aim of all our striving. 

Are studies elemejitary and higher? We are 
prone to think of studies as having other objects 
than these. Convention has divided them into 
higher and lower forms, and taught the world to 
regard some kinds of knowledge as noble with a 
nobility not their own and others as base with 
a baseness which does not belong to them. The 
same unthinking convention has led teachers and 
students alike to treat certain studies as concerns 
only of the early years of life, and other studies 
as belonging only to the later years. Teachers are 
apt to take pride in the fact that they teach " the 
higher studies " and the lack of it in the fact that 

[146] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

they teach the "lower" ones. If our pride is a 
product of our service, should it not be just the 
other way round ? The so-called elementary studies 
are elementar}^ to human activity, not to our school 
years. All the great arts represent the chief in- 
terests of the race and must be begun in early 
years and continued through life. The teacher of 
reading and writing thinks perhaps that hers is 
a menial task. But " with the art of writing," says 
Carlyle, " the true reign of miracles for mankind 
commenced. If we think of it, all that a university 
can do for us is still what the first school began 
doing — teach us to read." And every university 
teacher is constantly engaged in finding out whether 
or no his students can make for themselves the 
meaning which they are challenged to make by 
the printed page. Surely that is a process which 
cannot end on their part when they leave the 
university, but one which they must continue as 
long as they live. The problem of instruction in 
reading is not to teach people how to read but to 
read — a very different undertaking and one which 
lasts a lifetime. Writing too is much more than 
the shaping of letters. That is only its beginning. 
" Writing maketh an exact man," said Bacon. We 
misconceive its character when we take it in its 
lowest terms. No w^onder the business man finds 
fault with handwriting unrelated to composition 

[147] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

and unspecialized by purpose. Our students have 
learned to copy copies or to write a write, but 
rarely to write a letter or a bill of sale or a set of 
accounts. If the psychologists are correct in say- 
ing that adolescence disorganizes even this aspect 
of the handwriting of children, it would seem that 
the study of penmanship also cannot successfully 
be completed in the elementary school. When 
we begin mathematics w^e must deal with the 
most abstract of all the aspects of reality. We 
must look away from the stuff of the objects which 
we count in order to count them. We are ever 
more concerned with quality than with quantity. 
For this reason William T. Harris regarded arith- 
metic as a relatively unfruitful study. " What is 
the habit of thought worth which is trained to 
neglect the quality, that is, the essential nature of 
objects?"^ he asks. Plainly habituation in quanti- 
tative reckoning will not of itself make us expert 
discriminators of qualities. To distinguish food 
from poison, silk from cotton, truth from falsity, 
right from wrong, we must have learned by ex- 
perience the many degrees and the marks of each 
of these things. Mathematics does not profess 
to deal with real things in their concreteness, but 
it does guide us to real things by considering 
aspects which they always present in such uniform 

1 Annual Report of the Board of Education, p. 29, St. Louis, 1910. 

[148] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

ways as to open up pathways of experience. It 
is a language which tells us of experiences which 
we may have in the future in terms of the ex- 
periences which we have already had. Because 
it makes a very small part stand for the whole, 
that is, prefigures experiences by very dim aspects 
which are correspondingly easy to isolate, its ap- 
plication is the most far-reaching of all the phases 
of scientific method. 

We cannot regard our first lessons in the use 
of this difficult language of abstractions as easy. 
The mere mnemonic jugglery of symbols may not 
be difficult, but that is only the superficial part 
of the operation. These concepts have been formu- 
lated to enable us to dip up experiences. To know 
arithmetic does not mean merely to know how 
to use it, but to know to use it, just as to have 
learned reading means not to know how to read 
but to read. Such a laying hold of one of the 
chief tools w^iich mind has shaped for its work 
cannot be accomplished in the few short years of 
the elementary-school course. It requires a life- 
time of effort. Facility in even the simplest oper- 
ations slips away unless what is acquired in the 
primary school is continued in the college. If we 
would remember poetry, we must not only commit 
it, but we must continue to repeat it. The musician 
and the athlete must train for each performance. 

[149] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

The marksman may be able to hit the bull's-eye 
this year, but unless he keeps in practice he will 
be but an indifferent shot some months hence. 
Like these, facility in numbering is an art that can- 
not be acquired once for all so as to last a lifetime. 
Spelling, too, is an accomplishment that requires 
the persistent use of the dictionary. History and 
geography are life interests. Our knowledge of 
them should expand in after-school years, but even 
the elements run away from us unless we keep 
renewing them. Language we are ever learning. 
The lower school begins the analysis of these 
great racial activities; the higher schools but 
continue w^hat it has begun. 

Are studies properly classified as instrumental 
and cultural? Studies are sometimes divided into 
instrumental and cultural. It is difficult to com- 
prehend the reason for such a classification. The 
theory which is behind it is that some studies con- 
tain and supply knowledge while others are but 
tools which we must use in getting it. But knowl- 
edge, as we have seen, cannot reside in books or 
be transmitted by one person to another. Books, 
schools, teachers, even sciences themselves, are 
only its raw materials, opportunities for the activity 
of the learner to develop a living awareness. From 
this standpoint every study is only a path for him 
to walk in, a road so marked out and signboarded 

[150] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

by the experience of his fellow men that he need 
not make the wasteful preliminary explorations 
and chartings which they were compelled to make 
but in which he must do his own walking for him- 
self, for neither they nor anyone else can carry him 
upon their shoulders. Every study, then, is a series 
of standpoints to be taken, of problems to be solved, 
of experiences to be relived. Why? Because the 
experience which is to come is going to be like 
the experience which the learner has in pursuing it. 
He must use the experience which he already has 
in interpreting it, and the life which he lives and 
the experience which he gets in pursuing it, in the 
interpretation of new experience and the conse- 
quent reinterpretation of old experience as long as 
he is alive. He learns to read, but no matter how 
much we may congratulate ourselves upon his lit- 
eracy, unless his knowledge is of such a sort that 
it puts itself into practice neither he nor we will 
be the better for it. It is a favorite saying of the 
philosophers nowadays that reality is that which 
makes a difference to the systematic procedure of 
human nature. Education must be measured by 
the same foot rule. Unless it makes a difference, a 
very real difference, in the systematic procedure of 
human nature, it is not education. True education 
intends to make men producers of a certain kind 
of life. 

[151] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

Is history an instruvicntal study ? Reading, writ- 
ing, and arithmetic are regarded as instrumental 
studies. They present a series of acts to be per- 
formed. But history, it is said, is not a tool. It is 
a cultural study. Through it we are led to con- 
template the growth of the concept of liberty, the 
forming of the nation, the battles for its preserva- 
tion, the development of its industries, the whole- 
some ordering of its life. We must look upon 
these things because the spectacle will be pleasing 
to us and will do us good. But if this were all or 
nearly all which came from this or any other study, 
it would be a profaning of opportunity to rob youth 
of its years for so trifling a purpose. What is real 
makes a difference, but this is taken as though it 
made no difference. If we are taught the traditions 
of the nation, — not forsooth because there happen 
to be traditions and we happen to be learners and 
because convention has said to our otherwise un- 
occupied teachers that this is as good a way as any 
to fill an idle hour, but for the reason that Niceratus' 
father caused him to get every line of Homer by 
heart, that is, to make a moral man of him, — it 
would seem that history is an instrumental and not 
a cultural study. If it teaches us the use of tools, 
our country, her necessities, our citizenship, what 
the master workmen who made her thought of her, 
hoped for her, and did for her, then surely this 

[•52] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

knowledge is as practical as that of copying letters 
or pronouncing words. Our country is not an out- 
side entity which exists apart from the conscious- 
ness of its people. It is and always has been a life, 
a human arrangement, unescapable to be sure, but 
having the particular form which it has because of 
the intentions of men. It is essentially a social tool, 
a partnership which everyone must enter, and, to do 
so, must be taught the objects of the partnership 
and what has been accomplished by it to date. 
I sometimes ask my students to answer the ques- 
tion. Where is the United States ? Is it the land 
bounded by the Atlantic on the east, the Pacific on 
the west, Canada on the north, and Mexico on the 
south ? No, that is the territory of the United 
States. That was all here before Columbus came, 
and not one inch of it can pass away, though the 
United States may pass away. Perhaps then the 
United States is at Washington where the Presi- 
dent, the Supreme Court, and the Congress are? 
No, that is the government of the United States. 
The United States is in the hearts of its people. 
It is a thought, a hope, a resolution. It is always 
becoming, it never is. It is recreated anew when 
each one of its people catches the vision. That is 
the reason why the foreigner from another birth- 
place may become as real a citizen as the native 
born. It is a unity of minds to realize a common 

[153] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

purpose, a great cooperative undertaking. Can 
what it has been when reflected upon be other than 
a means for what it shall be? History is our initia- 
tion into the guild of citizens. Every part of the 
liturgy has meaning and cries to us to hearken 
to its significance. It must deal with facts and 
nothing but facts, but its facts are meanings. 

What is science? Science also is a human institu- 
tion. It is only a specially persistent attempt to 
use past and present experience to anticipate com- 
ing experience, due to the conviction that the ex- 
perience of the future will be like that of the past. 
We reduce our experience up to date to formulas, 
concepts, laws, dropping out its time-and-placeness 
and omitting all such particularity from it in these 
general statements. We face forward. " Belief in 
a general statement," says W. K. Clifford,^ "is an 
artifice of our mental constitution, whereby infi- 
nitely various sensations and groups of sensations 
are brought into connection with infinitely various 
actions and groups of actions. . . . The important 
point is that science, though apparently transformed 
into pure knowledge, has yet never lost its charac- 
ter of being a craft \ and that it is not the knowl- 
edge itself which can rightly be called science, but 
a special way of getting and using knowledge. 
Namely, science is the getting of knowledge from 

1 Clifford, Lectures and Essays, Vol. II, p. 77. London, 1901. 

[154] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

experience on the assumption of uniformity in 
nature, and the use of such knowledge to guide 
the actions of men. And the most abstract state- 
ments or propositions in science are to be regarded 
as bundles of hypothetical maxims packed into 
portable shape and size. Every scientific fact is 
a shorthand expression for a vast number of prac- 
tical directions : if you want so and so, do so 
and so." 

Of like tenor is the statement of Professor W. S. 
Franklin, quoted by Professor James: " I think that 
the sickliest notion of physics, even if a student 
gets it, is that it is ^the science of masses, mole- 
cules, and the ether,' and I think that the healthiest 
notion, even if a student does not wholly get it, 
is that physics is the science of the ways of taking 
hold of bodies and pushing them."^ 

Is literahire an instrumental study? When we 
come to the classics, pragmatic education meets a 
stiff bulwark. Shall immemorial dignity be forced 
to give the countersign of the market place ? Shall 
that which is ancient and established take its place 
along with the provisional, the temporary, the in- 
strumental ? Surely here, if anywhere, is art for 
art's sake, knowledge for knowledge's sake. '* That 
ideal ' professor of education,' " Matthew Arnold, 
made a careful analysis of their value, which is 

^ Science, January 2, 1903. 

[155] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

all too much neglected. " Meanwhile neither our 
humanists nor our realists adequately conceive the 
circle of knowledge, and each party is unjust to 
all that to which its own aptitudes do not carry it. 
The humanists are loath to believe that man has 
any access to vital knowledge except by knowing 
himself, — the poetry, philosophy, history which his 
spirit has created ; the realists, that he has any ac- 
cess except by knowing the world, — the physical 
sciences, the phenomena and laws of nature. I, like 
so many others who have been brought up in the 
old routine, imperfectly as I know letters, — the work 
of the human spirit itself, — know nothing else, and 
my judgment therefore may fairly be impeached. 
But it seems to me that so long as the realists 
persist in cutting in two the circle of knowledge, 
so long do they leave for practical purposes the 
better portion to their rivals, and in the govern- 
ment of human affairs their rivals will beat them. 
And for this reason. The study of letters is the 
study of the operation of human force, of human 
freedom and activity; the study of nature is the 
study of the operation of non-human forces, of 
human limitation and passivity. The contemplation 
of human force and activity tends naturally to 
heighten our own force and activity; the contempla- 
tion of human limits and passivity tends rather to 
check it. Therefore the men who have had the 

[•56] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

humanistic training have played, and yet play, so 
prominent a part in human affairs, in spite of their 
prodigious ignorance of the universe ; because their 
training has powerfully fomented the human force 
in them. And in this way letters are indeed runes, 
like those magic runes taught by the Valkyrie 
Brynhild to Sigurd, the Scandinavian Achilles, 
which put the crown to his endowment and made 
him invincible. 

"Still, the humanists themselves suffer so much 
from the ignorance of physical facts and laws, and 
from the inadequate conception of nature, and of 
man as a part of nature, — the conduct of human 
affairs suffers so much from the same cause, — that 
the intellectual insufficiency of the humanities, con- 
ceived as the one access to vital knowledge, is per- 
haps at the present moment yet more striking than 
their power of practical stimulation ; and we may 
willingly declare wath the Italians that no part of 
the circle of knowledge is common or unclean, none 
is to be cried up at the expense of another. . . . All 
the historical part of this volume has shown that 
the great movements of the human spirit have 
either not got hold of the public schools, or not 
kept hold of them. What reforms have been made 
have been patchwork, the work of able men who, 
into certain departments of school study which 
were dear to them, infused reality and life, but who 

[157] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

looked little beyond these departments and did not 
concern themselves with fully adjusting instruction 
to the wants of the human mind. There is, there- 
fore, no intelligent tradition to be set aside in our 
public schools; there is only a routine, arising in 
the way we have seen, and destined to be super- 
seded as soon as ever that more adequate idea of 
instruction, of which the modern spirit is even now 
in travail, shall be born. 

" That idea, so far as one can already forecast 
its lineaments, will subordinate the matter and 
methods of instruction to the end in view ; — the 
end of conducting the pupil, as I have said, through 
the means of his special aptitudes to a knowledge 
of himself and the world. The natural sciences are 
a necessary instrument of this knowledge ; letters 
and Alterthumswissenschaft are a necessary instru- 
ment of this knowledge. But if school instruction 
in the natural sciences has almost to be created, 
school instruction in letters and Alterthumswis- 
senschaft has almost to be created anew. The 
prolonged philological discipline, which in our pres- 
ent schools guards the access to Alterthumswissen- 
schaft, brings to mind the philosophy of Albertus 
Magnus, the mere introduction to which — the 
logic, — was by itself enough to absorb all the stu- 
dent's time of study. . . . But many people have 
even convinced themselves that the preliminary 

[158] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

philological discipline is so extremely valuable as to 
be an end in itself; and, similarly, that the mathe- 
matical discipline preliminary to a knowledge of 
nature is so extremely valuable as to be an end 
in itself. It seems to me that those who profess 
this conviction do not enough consider the quantity 
of knowledge inviting the human mind and the 
importance to the human mind of really getting 
to it. No preliminary discipline is to be pressed at 
the risk of keeping minds from getting at the main 
matter, a knowledge of themselves and the world. . , . 
No doubt it is indispensable to have exact habits of 
mind, and mathematics and grammar are excellent 
for the promotion of these habits; and Latin, be- 
sides having so large a share in so many modern 
languages, offers a grammar which is the best of 
all grammars for this promotion. Here are valid 
reasons for making every schoolboy learn some 
Latin and some mathematics, but not for turning 
the preliminary matter into the principal, and sacri- 
ficing every aptitude except that for the science 
of language or of pure mathematics. A Latin 
grammar of thirty pages and the most elementary 
treatise of arithmetic and of geometry, would amply 
suffice for the uses of philology and mathematics 
as a universally imposed preparatory discipline. 
By keeping within these strict limits, absolute 
exactness of knowledge, — the habit which is here 

['59] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

our professed aim, — might be far better attained 
than it is at present. But it is well to insist, 
besides, that all knowledge may and should, when 
we have got fit teachers for it, be so taught as 
to promote exact habits of mind ; and we are not 
to take leave of these when we pass beyond our 
introductory discipline. But it is sometimes said 
that only through close philological studies and 
the close practice of Latin and Greek composition 
can Alterthumswissenchaft itself, the science of the 
ancient world, be truly reached. It is said to be 
only through these that we get really to know 
Greek and Latin literature. For all practical pur- 
poses this proposition is untrue, and its untruth 
can be easily tested. ... I cannot help thinking, 
therefore, that the modern spirit. will deprive Latin 
and Greek composition and verbal scholarship 
of their present universal and preponderant appli- 
cation in our secondary schools, and will make 
them as practiced in their present high scale, 
Privatstiidien, as the Germans say, for boys with 
an eminent aptitude for them."^ 

Is this educatio7i for efficiency! The object of 
education of all sorts, then, w^ould seem to be to 
enable the student to get such a grip upon himself 
and the world of men and of things that he can use 

1 Arnold, Higher Schools and Universities in Germany, chap, viii, 
pp. 172-181. London, 1874. 

ri6oi 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

what he has learned in making his hfe function. 
Is this education for efficiency? That altogether 
depends on how you define efficiency. It is one 
thing to strive to equip a mind to function well 
in its present environment and as long as that 
environment remains static, and quite another 
to equip it to make over its environment and to 
make over its own responses to meet a rapidly 
changing social life. The doctrine of evolution has 
taught us to say that education is adjustment to 
environment, but it is still too often ' overlooked 
that environment itself grows, is dynamic, and ever 
running away from us. Education must not only 
fit the individual to it but to keep up with it. 
It must not only enable him to adjust himself as 
nearly perfectly as may be but to readjust himself 
and keep readjusting himself as long as he lives. 
Besides, he must do his part in remaking it to fit 
his own and the needs of his fellows. Like the 
Athenian ephebe he must be solemnly dedicated 
to the task of leaving his country and the world 
greater and better than they were when committed 
to him. Each one must be trained to pull his own 
weight and not to prevent his fellow from pulling 
his ; that is, each one must be able to buy his 
living from society and must not interfere with his 
neighbor as he buys his, and in addition, each one 
must by his effort raise the standard of living both 

[i6i] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

for himself and for his group. That he may have 
inherited wealth or position docs not exempt him. 
His active nature and his membership in the group 
both require him to work his way by performing 
his share of service. 

Liberal versus illiberal editcation. There is one 
ancient distinction which a slaveholding civilization 
introduced into education, which society based upon 
a caste system has retained, but which a people 
that takes democracy seriously is sure to banish. 
It is the distinction which Aristotle bequeathed to 
the ages when he wrote, " There can be no doubt 
that children should be taught those useful things 
which are really necessary, but not all things ; for 
occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal ; 
and to young children should be imparted only 
such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to them 
without vulgarizing them. And any occupation, art, 
or science which makes the body or soul or mind 
of the freeman less fit for the practice or exercise 
of virtue, is vulgar; wherefore, we call those arts 
vulgar which tend to deform the body, and likewise 
all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade 
the mind. There are also some liberal arts quite 
proper for a freeman to acquire, but only in a cer- 
tain degree, and if he attend to them too closely, 
in order to attain perfection in them, the same evil 
effects will follow. The object also which a man 

[162] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

sets before him makes a great difference: if he 
does or learns anything for his own sake, or for the 
sake of his friends, or with a view to excellence, 
the action will not appear illiberal ; but if done for 
the sake of others, the very same action will be 
thought menial and servile."^ The necessity of 
preserving status by learning nothing in the way 
that a slave would learn it sticks out in every 
sentence of this distinction. 

Stoic reflection attempted to give the notion of 
liberal education another meaning. It strove to 
revise the import of the phrase "liberal studies." 
To the objection that a slave should not pursue 
philosophy Seneca replies, " Is he a slave ? but 
perchance a freeman in mind. Is he a slave ? 
Show me one who is not."^ "Studies are called 
liberal because they are worthy of a free man. But 
there is one study which is liberal indeed, which 
maketh a man free, and that is wisdom, high, 
valiant and magnanimous ; the others are petty 
and childish things. . . . The mind is made perfect 
by one thing only, by the unchanging knowledge 
of good and evil which philosophy imparts."^ The 
phrase " a liberal education " still keeps a trace of 
the connotation which Aristotle gave it. It means 
not merely a liberalizing education, but also that 

1 Aristotle, Politics (Jowett's translation), 1337 f. 

2 Seneca, Epistle 47. ^ Ibid. Epistle 88. 

[163] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

kind of education which most becomes the proud 
children of those who claim to be the nobler class. 
It is a question begging designation. If we describe 
one kind of education as liberal, we do not dare to 
say that another kind is illiberal, for no education 
can be that. We do not say it, but our phrase 
implies it. Even if the phrase did not have this 
backhanded tendency, its denotation is so indefinite 
as to make it worthless. All real education is lib- 
eral, for all real education makes men free, and all 
real education is for service. The phrase " a lib- 
eral education " has an historic significance, but no 
present-day applicability. It is too outworn and 
defective a bottle to hold the new wine of demo- 
cratic endeavor. 

Is education properly classified as vocational and 
avocatiojial ? Since education is for service, it is 
throughout vocational. Half the ills of mankind 
come from the misuse of words, according to 
Socrates. In recent years an effort has been made 
to give this good old word vocation a narrow 
technical meaning, which neither its history, its 
etymology, nor the needs of the science of educa- 
tion will bear. " Vocational education," we are 
told, " is any education the controlling purpose of 
which is to fit for a gainful occupation." Etymo- 
logically, one's vocation is one's calling. When 
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews saluted 

[164] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

those to whom he wrote as " partakers of the 
heavenly calhng," and St. Paul urged the men of 
Corinth each to " abide in the same calling wherein 
he w^as called," they were speaking to them about 
their vocations. When Fichte wrote on " The 
Vocation of Man " and Emerson gave his famous 
address on the " Vocation of the Scholar," they 
were not using that word in the sense of " a gain- 
ful occupation." One's profession is not a vocation 
until it invites his whole energy and takes posses- 
sion of his spirit. That is the meaning which the 
word has in literature. It signifies the purpose to 
which one devotes his life. There can be no ques- 
tion that the gaining of a livelihood is an essential 
part of the vocation of everyone. But there are 
other parts just as essential, or perhaps even more 
essential, in the vocation of the human being. 
Those who seek to restrict the meaning of this 
word to trade training, industrial teaching, or spe- 
cial instruction, which prepares for a gainful occu- 
pation, divide education into tw^o kinds with it 
— vocational education and avocational education. 
Vocational education is that education which pre- 
pares for a gainful occupation. All the rest is 
avocational, they say — which is a short and easy 
way of using words to discredit the importance of 
all other forms of instruction. Human activity 
cannot be exhaustively classified as vocational and 

[1^5] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

avocational without making one's avocation more 
important than one's vocation. One's avocation 
calls him away from his regular duties. It is that 
secondary purpose which is pursued from sheer 
interest without the constraint of necessity. Is 
citizenship vocational or avocational ? Is being a 
good neighbor, a good member of a family? In 
one sense one is called to these things more im- 
peratively than he is called to make a living, for 
the state removes him from society if he fails to 
prepare himself to meet its requirements in these 
directions, while it provides him a living and lets 
him go free, if he is unable to make it for himself. 
Again " no man would choose the possession of 
all goods in the world on the condition of solitari- 
ness, man being a social animal and formed by 
nature for living with others." ^ Preparation for 
these life interests is essentially vocational, for they 
are constituent parts of the vocation of man. It is 
a preparation for necessary human working, but 
not for money-gaining working merely. 

Recognition of the fact that vocational education 
must be wider than trade training is furnished by 
the action of the school authorities of Edinburgh, 
Scotland, who combine four elements in their 
scheme of vocational training: (i) training for 
occupation, (2) training in the English language, 

1 Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. IX, Sect. XI. 

[166] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

(3) training in citizenship, (4) physical training. 
" Education for a calling," says Dr. Kerschensteiner, 
"offers us the very best foundation for the general 
education of a man. We are far too much inclined 
to assume both in the old world and in the new, 
that it is possible to educate a man without refer- 
ence to some special calling. . . . Yet it lies in our 
power to make an education for a calling as many 
sided as any education can be. . . . Industry is not 
the aim of human society. The aim of society 
is the increase of justice and culture. . . . The 
schools are not merely technical or trade schools. 
They only make use of the pupil's trade as the 
basis of their educational work. The trade training 
which they give is not the object of the school. 
However thorough this training in a continuation 
school, for instance, in Munich, is, it is only the 
starting point for the wider general training for 
the education in practical and theoretical thinking, 
in consideration for others, in devotion to common 
interests, in social service for the state and com- 
munity." ^ A definite terminology is highly impor- 
tant for education, but arbitrary usage must not 
be allowed to transform words which have had a 
vital significance through the ages into narrowly 

1 Three Lectures on Vocational Training by Dr. Georg Kerschen- 
steiner, published by the Commercial Club of Chicago, 191 1. Lecture I, 
pp. 2-9. 

[167] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

technical terms. There are other terms which have 
been used to designate gainful labor, such as trades, 
industries, occupations, etc. The education which 
prepares specifically for them is properly desig- 
nated as trade, industrial, or occupational training. 
Of itself it does not constitute vocational education, 
though it forms a necessary part of it. That term 
should be saved to designate the pui-posive training 
for human living which all real education seeks to 
develop. Our contention, however, is not for the 
word but for the meaning. Genuine education of 
all sorts is either specifically preparatory or must 
become so. Trade instruction has no monopoly 
of this quality and must not be allowed to seem 
to have. 

One must be trained to make a living ; that does 
not mean that he can live by bread alone, and 
assuredly it does not mean that he can live without 
it. Much of the so-called industrial education has 
no other purpose than the making of boys and 
girls into hands. Much of the so-called cultural 
education makes dependents. Real education is 
satisfied with neither of these results. It strives 
to make self-sustaining persons. We may name its 
parts by distinctive names such as cultural instruc- 
tion and technical or trade training, but they are 
all parts of one indispensable whole of preparation, 
not alternative species of education. 

[i68] 



THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 

According to this analysis, we should recognize 
but one kind and various degrees of education, the 
broad and the narrow, or, when looked at from the 
standpoint of time, the long course and the short 
one. The object is the same for everyone, that is, 
the conscious reorganizing of experience in order 
to shape it into the best possible tool with which 
to anticipate and meet the future. There is none 
too much wisdom in our forefathers' outlook, none 
too much first-hand experience which we ourselves 
can have with men and things, none too much 
stocking of our minds with the insight and the 
plans which the race has worked out in its efforts 
to meet the needs of life and which we may make 
our own by reliving them. Conditions of aptitude 
and opportunity force some of us to be satisfied 
with the narrower course, and others to demand 
the wider training, but the difference is in degree, 
not in kind. 



[169] 



CHAPTER VI 

LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

Learning for doing. The student lives in three 
tenses. Behind him and about him is the world 
which his fellow men have learned to harness more 
or less successfully to their needs. About him and 
in front of him is the world which he must harness 
more successfully than they did. For he must not 
merely repeat their achievements of the days 
before ; in him the race must grow in grace to meet 
the ever new demands of a living universe. For our 
purposes we may image life as one vast shop with 
the raw stuff which is to be worked into more 
serviceable shapes lying all about and the tools 
with which it is to be worked hanging in profusion 
from the walls. The master workman is busy at his 
task, and his apprentices beside him are learning 
their trade by helping him. They must acquire it 
not merely by rule of thumb, though, for the ways 
of working iron which are employed are imperfect 
and better ways must be found out; besides there 
are better metals than iron for many of the pur- 
poses for which we use it. Ohe must master the 

[170] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

craft in such a way as to find out what they are 
and devise and adopt the requisite methods of 
working them. 

Thus education throughout is a doing on the 
part of the learner. But what he learns to do 
as an apprentice is different from what he will 
do later as a master workman — different, but yet 
recognizably and functionally the same, for while 
both the sensory content and the motor response 
of his action will change, the new action will 
be only a readaptation of the old content and 
response which he learned to make when a similar 
sensory content presented itself. It is a taking 
of the most useful tools in the race's workshop 
by the student into his own hands and by his own 
trial and effort learning to use them, but in such a 
way that he will go on perfecting his skill in their 
use as long as he lives. Education, that is, seeks 
the impossible. It is forever engaged in help- 
ing each student to become a perpetual-motion 
machine, to start a process in such a way that it 
will continue itself to the end of the student's days. 

Some forms of teacJiing in which the sttidents 
doing is clearly the end sought. Fortunate are those 
teachers whose task is plain, who do not have to 
fight their way through a well-nigh impenetrable 
thicket of contradictory conceptions as to just what 
they are employed to do before they can set about 

[171] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

doing it. For what can be more despairing than 
to labor at an undefined task with the conviction 
heavy upon one that in spite of the fact that he 
does not know what must be done, the work upon 
which he is engaged is nevertheless the most 
serious thing in the world? Is it any wonder that 
the teacher's task is a consuming one ! If he fails 
to understand it and falls back upon conventional 
notions of his duty, he does not educate ; and if he 
strives to educate, he does not produce a conven- 
tional product. In either case he is ground between 
the millstones of dissatisfaction. 

Happy indeed are those teachers of physical 
training whose task is simply to teach their 
students to do the things which bring health and 
bodily efficiency. When they give instruction in 
breathing, it is plain that the one object which 
they have is not to give their students a knowledge 
about breathing, but to get each one of them to use 
his own lungs in a health-giving fashion. When 
they teach them to sit and to stand and to walk, 
it is not merely a knowledge of how to do these 
things, but an actual doing of them that they must 
aim at. And when they teach them the setting-up 
exercises or to dance, to run, to swim, to wrestle, to 
box, to fence, to work on the bars, the rings, the 
horse, or with the weights, it is a doing on the part 
of the student that they seek — not a knowing 

[172] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

merely, but a doing accompanied, if possible, by 
such a comprehension of purpose, by such an 
interest in the process and such an awareness of 
increasing skill that the work will not be given up 
until habits of functioning shall have established 
themselves which may be relied upon to contribute 
their share to the physical well-being of the 
individual as long as he exists. It is difficult to 
think of a knowledge of physical training which 
could have any other function than to direct 
physical doing. 

The aim of the teacher of the fine arts is almost 
equally clear. If he gives instruction in painting, 
singing, or the playing of an instrument, it is plain 
that the instructor must guide, but the student 
must perform ; that no matter how much the 
master may know about the theory of the art, 
that knowledge will have meaning for the stu- 
dent and can be imparted to him only in connec- 
tion with his own doing; that all formal lessons 
such as learning to read the score, finger exercises, 
the manipulation of the stops, the tuning of the 
instrument, etc. are but the necessary parts of a 
larger process and without significance by them- 
selves. The skill which is sought is a habit, and 
not a habit in general, but a particular doing con- 
ditioned by its own particular body of sensory ele- 
ments. This habit will not come as a by-product of 

[173] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

general aimless familiarity with an instrument, but 
only by day-by-day striving to master its use. That 
mastery is never so complete that after any definite 
number of years of preparation the great pianist 
is at last able to play anything without any pre- 
liminary practice whatever, but even in the period 
of his greatest virtuosity he must still practice a 
number of hours each day to keep in form. 

What is a general knoiu ledge of music or atJiletics? 
Education has much to learn from those who train 
themselves consciously to marked degrees of skill. 
They are not confused by obscurity of purpose, 
there is little delusion among them as to what the 
teacher must do and what the pupil, they do not 
make the error of assuming that the best way to 
learn to play upon the piano is to begin with the 
violin, the relation of theory to practice is fairly 
plain to them, and there is but little mistaking of 
the procedure of habit forming or of the place and 
function of interest in learning. They do not split 
the sensory-motor arc by saying that the purpose 
of instruction is to acquire methods of working 
with one subject matter in order to apply them to 
another. With them every subject matter calls for 
its own series of reactions, and every series of motor 
activities is called forth by its own unique percep- 
tual series. To be sure, there are general terms, 
common elements in athletics as well as in music, 

[174] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

but what kind of a knowledge of music does any- 
one possess who has only a general and no particu- 
lar knowledge of it? And what kind of an athlete 
is he who has a general knowledge of athletics but 
no particular form of athletic skill? The general 
grows out of the particular and cannot exist apart 
from it. A general training is either a combination 
of several particular forms of training such as would 
enable a musician to play upon several different 
instruments, or an athlete to contest in several dif- 
ferent kinds of athletic events, or it is such a non- 
descript and puerile knowledge about these fields 
as to be synonymous merely with a vague acquaint- 
ance with them. A general education is sometimes 
spoken of as an all-round training. An all-round 
athlete is one who is proficient in several forms of 
athletic skill, and an all-round musician is one who 
is proficient in several kinds of musical skill. But 
in what forms of skill is the man w^io has pursued 
an all-round education proficient ? 

Knowmg comes from doing. It will not do to say 
that he knows many things but cannot do them. 
Awareness and doing cannot be separated thus. 
The sensory-motor arc is one. Neither function can 
exist without the other. Wherever there is sensory 
experience there is motor action, and wherever 
there is doing it brings its quota of awareness. 
If the knowledge is poor and mean, that is because 

[175] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

the doing has been poor and mean which precon- 
ditioned it. To know anything without being able 
to do it is to know it poorly. One does not have to 
be a sugar planter to know that sugar tastes sweet, 
but he does have to taste it. One does not have to 
play in the orchestra to know that its music is voic- 
ing the unutterable, but he does have to listen to it, 
not once but many times until he begins to compre- 
hend its language. There is a difference between 
appreciation and production, but it does not lie in 
the fact that appreciation is a passive state while 
production is a doing. Both are active states; 
their difference is in degree of comprehension 
rather than in kind. All knowledge is precon- 
ditioned by a doing on the part of the learner. 
The text of the New Testament — " If any man will 
do his wall, he shall know of the doctrine " — might 
well be used as a motto to indicate what is required 
in all forms of education. 

One's knowledge grows in proportion to one's 
doing. The sugar planter knows sugar more thor- 
oughly than the merchant who sells it or the per- 
son who consumes it, for he also sells and consumes 
it. The person who merely reads about it does 
something that gives him an experience of it, but 
his relation to it is so remote that unless his aw^are- 
ness can take on an intenser form it can hardly be 
called knowledge. It is " experience " which " makes 

[176] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

the days of men to proceed according to art and 
inexperience according to chance, and different 
persons in different ways are proficient in different 
arts." 

It is the accumulated purposive doings of the 
race which have defined the problems, shaped the 
hypotheses, collected the evidence to prove and 
disprove them, and formulated the provisional con- 
clusions which we call science. Its doctrines, no 
matter how seemingly conclusive, still wait upon 
the further experience of the race to reedit and 
revise them. They are not final and unchangeable 
truth, for there is no science so perfect that it is 
not subject to improvement. 

What then is the relation of theory to practice? 
The answer must be that theory or thinking grew 
out of practice ; that problems came out of doing ; 
that if doing could go on smoothly and unfailingly, 
without any jolts or jars, there would be no prob- 
lems and no mental straining to solve them. Do- 
ing would automatically reach its goal, and thinking 
or theorizing would be wholly uncalled for. What 
reason could it possibly have for existing? It would 
be the merest of shadows — an ineffective epiphe- 
nomenon in a universe in which everything else 
makes a difference and, because it does, is real. 

Percepts come from doings. Knowledge, then, is 
not an adventitious thing. It has no being for itself. 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

It grew out of defeated purpose, it exists to redeem 
action. By purpose only can it be generated, and 
purposive action alone will correct its defects and 
make it grow beyond its present stature. This 
means that the race as well as every individual in 
it is leading the experimental life. No one of them 
can get wisdom by merely being receptive. Even 
sensations do not come to us of themselves, but are 
internally aroused by the bodily defeats which we 
suffer. The suit that fits does not feel. The one 
that feels impedes. I can walk on the ground and 
hardly know that I am walking, but in walking a 
plank high up in the air a thousand sensations 
that I never noticed before make themselves felt. 
Sensation is due to the breakdown of habit, to 
the buckling up of action. The very word percep- 
tion indicates that it is fundamentally not a receiv- 
ing but a taking, an outreaching, a seizing. Why 
was it that the Greeks did not discover the world 
of physical forces, gravitation, steam, electricity, 
radium, and the gas engine? Their world was like 
ours, these forces were working all about them. 
Their senses were as keen as ours. Their curi- 
osity was as great, and as for their talent, Mr. 
Galton has declared "that the average ability of 
the Athenian race was on the lowest possible es- 
timate very nearly two grades higher than our own 
[the English], that is, about as much as our race 

[178] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

is above the African negro." If the forces were 
there and the keenness of intelhgence to discern 
them was there, why were they not found out ? The 
answer must be that the discovery of facts is not 
due to their presence nor to the possession of a 
mind capable of grasping them, but rather to the 
using of mind in the direction in which the facts 
he. The Greeks were not looking for the forces 
of physical nature — that is why they did not see 
them. Inventions and discoveries are remarkably 
simple after they have been made, but it is only 
the person who is hunting for something of that 
sort who makes them. 

One who would learn anything must put himself 
in the way of learning it. He must do that which 
will make him feel the problem. If he once gets 
that, his mind will work out the answer; but if he 
goes about getting answers to questions which he 
has never asked and solutions for problems which 
he has never raised, he will be performing only lip 
service to knowledge, and instead of fitting himself 
by getting a rich and full experience and ordering 
it to go on mastering experience and to help others 
to do so, he will be engaged in unfitting himself 
and in unfitting those who give and take with him. 

The fu7ictio7i of the teacher. The wise teacher 
is immensely helpful in this process of learning, 
but his influence must all be indirect like the 

[179] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

gardener's. If I want to learn to swim, someone 
must show me what the best strokes are and stand 
by and tell me whether I am succeeding in moving 
my arms and legs in the w^ay he has done, as I try 
to take these strokes in the air. Even if he tells 
me that I am succeeding, I have as yet done noth- 
ing which deserves to be called learning to swim. 
I cannot possibly develop the method in one me- 
dium and apply it with any degree of success in 
another. I can only get a merest beginning of the 
idea of w4iat must be done by striking out in the 
air, and then I must get into the water and practice 
the stroke persistently for many days in the very 
medium in which it can be made to accomplish 
my purpose. It is the same stroke in both cases, 
but the difference between the air and the water 
is so great that it wall not carry over to any consid- 
erable extent. The new sensations which I get 
when I leap into the water are so disconcerting 
that the old reaction is nearly unavailable in con- 
trolling them. I must, as it were, begin all over 
again. The teacher is still of the greatest value 
to me. He tells me what I must do, and he can 
see whether I do it or not, whereas my eyes are 
in the water and my attention is upon other things. 
He keeps me at my task ; and just because he sur- 
rounds me with the necessity of trying to do the 
thing in what his experience has taught him is 

ri8o1 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

a good way, and keeps me at it and hopeful that 
I will learn, in time I may learn to swim. 

How very different is his procedure from that 
of my regular teacher in school or college! In 
learning to swim I know from the first what it is 
that I want to do. I also know that I must myself 
do it. My teacher knows that he can help me, 
but he also knows that he can help me only a 
very little, and he does not for a moment make 
the mistake of supposing that any amount of verbal 
knowledge which he may try to give me about 
swimming, or any body of directions which I may 
strive to master in the air, will take the place of 
long-continued practice in the water. To the water, 
then, I must go, though he goes with me to help 
me find out what to do and to see that I do it. 

Shoicld verbal study be allozved to take the place of 
doing? Suppose the master workman in the shop, 
which is the world, should say to his apprentices: 
"It is true that you have come here to learn how 
to use the best of these tools in the working of 
iron, but that is a tedious and illiberal process. It 
will be more profitable to you if I should tell you 
some of the more important facts about them, and 
then we will spend the remainder of the time that 
you are to be here in analyzing the language which 
I shall have been compelled to employ in describ- 
ing them to you. After all, language is the most 

[i8i] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

important of human concerns. Some say it is a tool 
just like all these others here, but I think it is so 
much more than that that I am convinced that if 
you will only take the trouble, not indeed to learn 
to use it — for that is the least important thing 
about it — but to learn all the curious facts and 
distinctions that subtle minds have found out about 
it, and to recognize them when you meet instances 
of them, you will be better prepared to use both it 
and all these other tools than any amount of work- 
ing with them under my direction could make 
you." Was it not Gorgias, the sophist, who said 
that rhetoric was so superior an art that if anyone 
wants to learn anything, say medicine, or the use of 
weapons, or philosophy, he should not study them 
but should study rhetoric instead in order to learn 
them ? Our master workman has turned sophist 
and is unduly neglecting the efforts which Socrates, 
Plato, and Aristotle made to persuade the Athe- 
nians to a better way of thinking. His apprentices 
are there to learn the major arts by which "experi- 
ence has taught men to make their days proceed " 
rather than "by chance." They have not come to 
acquire a knowledge about thc7?z merely, so that 
they may appreciate something of their significance 
when they see others employ them. They want if 
possible to learn at least the beginnings of their 
use for themselves. It is not the lore of highly 

[182] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

specialized scholarship, whatever that may mean, 
that they seek, but such a mastery of the elements 
of a process which the race has found indispensable 
that they may practice it in an unspecialized way 
for themselves. Has their teacher any right to con- 
fine them to a merely descriptive acquaintance with 
these tools or to a dismembering of languages ? 

Does each study require the pupil to learn to per- 
form its particular kind of doing? There is a 
definite something to be done by the pupil when 
he learns to read, to write, or to number. Is there 
not an equally definite something to be done by 
him when he studies history, geography, science, 
language, or literature ? Merely to amass knowl- 
edge, we have seen, cannot be the object of his 
striving. There is far too much of it, and it is of 
all possible degrees of worth. There must be a 
principle of selection by which that which is most 
worth while is picked out from that which is less 
worth while. It is only the knowledge which works 
that the race cares for. It is that kind only which 
it is bent upon preserving. Science is a craft — 
literature, a rune. Language is to the mind what 
the abacus is to the Chinese merchant — a tool 
pure and simple. Logic and mathematics are spe- 
cial forms of thinking. Geography is each one's 
mental picture of the world. Their principles, their 
facts, their beauty, exist solely to be recreated by 

[183] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

us in terms of our own conviction because they 
are useful, nay even indispensable, to us in steering 
a truly human course through life. Shall we then 
attempt to take them over without paying for them 
by the doing which alone will make us possessors 
of them ? Shall we try to get profit from them by 
dislocating their facts from their meanings and tak- 
ing the facts only? Or shall we study language as 
a tool, science as a craft, literature as a rune, and 
thinking as a practice ? Here are definite things 
to be done — things as definite and as instrumental 
as reading, writing, and numbering. We must re- 
member that doing is mental as well as manual. 

The knowledge which each science offers is a body 
of hypothetical directions. Our argument has pro- 
ceeded on the assumption that knowledge is not 
an end in itself but a means for the rectification 
of experience; that it is a body of practical direc- 
tions which we must follow if we want to attain 
certain results. It takes the form of a hypothetical 
injunction : " if you want to make pig iron, treat 
your ore together with this fuel and this limestone 
flux " ; " if you want to be a citizen of the United 
States, remember that the principles upon which 
the men who made it organized your government 
are as follows " ; " if you want to be a good man, 
you must not forget that the ethical judgment is 
due to reflection upon conduct." When expanded, 

[184] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

the scientific statement reveals its directive charac- 
ter. It seems to have nothing of the guideboard 
in it as long as it reads : " pig iron is a combi- 
nation of iron with from 2 to 4.75 per cent of 
carbon, existing partly in a state of chemical com- 
bination with the iron and partially as mechanically 
distributed uncombined or graphitic carbon " ; or 
"the declaration of principles upon which the 
government of the United States was founded 
reads as follows " ; or " the ethical judgment is one 
whose content is conduct." Knowledge has been 
reported in the third person so long that it has 
almost lost its real character of a message to the 
reader. It has gained the abstractness of imper- 
sonality, but in freeing itself from prejudice and 
private desire it has almost lost its meaning. 

Should we strive foi^ knowledge for the sake of 
knozvledge? Is there room for any doubt about its 
practical character? Yes, it would seem there is, 
for there is a well-worn maxim which presidents 
of colleges and teachers of conventionally valued 
studies are continually dinning into the ears of 
students to the effect that " knowledge exists for 
its own sake. The true student seeks knowledge 
for the sole reason that it is knowledge." As a final 
philosophy, this doctrine can have little meaning. 
As a generalization from histor^^ it is not warranted 
by facts, and when tried by the test of psychology 

[185] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

it necessitates the severance of intelligence from 
action or volition. It cannot be true. 

What has happened is that a counsel as to 
method of procedure to be followed in the getting 
of knowledge has been expanded into a philosophy 
as to its meaning. The attention of the investigator 
must not be diverted from the investigation which 
he has in hand either to count its cost or to count 
its probable income. A mind divided against itself 
cannot observe accurately or devote itself to such 
patient waiting upon the facts as they demand 
before they will disclose themselves. Singleness 
of purpose is requisite. Since the purpose of the 
investigator is knowledge, it must be his sole aim. 
But when the facts are discovered, they must be 
tried out by another attitude. They pass out of the 
hands of the investigator into the hands of his 
fellow men. They may accept his discovery, but they 
ask now not, Is it so ? but What does it signify to our 
purposes? What is it worth? If the discoverer re- 
plies, " This is knowledge and you must consider it 
just because it is so," they reply quite scornfully 
that many things are so which are of no concern 
to them, that it is not truth but the truth which 
must be taken account of that they care for. And 
they are right. If we were pure intelligences only, 
knowing would be our sole concern ; but we are 
life conservers instead, which means that the will 

[186] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

to live selects the forms of knowing which are vital, 
and as soon as it can rectify the tendency of mind 
to delusion, it discards the rest. 

Why " knowledge for the sake of knowledge " has 
become a slogan of the schools. But there is a special 
reason why " knowledge for the sake of knowledge " 
has become a slogan of the schools and is more 
than a methodological motto to them. It is not 
that the investigator must keep from confusing 
himself by attempting to determine the question 
of utility before he has found out what it is which 
may or may not be useful, and in so doing has 
deserted his function to busy himself with passing 
a final judgment, which is the function of society as 
a whole and one which^ it can perform only when 
he has found what the facts are. It is that it is 
so much easier to repeat the teaching of the day 
before that old studies and teaching habits have 
a peculiar sense of fitness, and rather than discard 
them after their utility has gone out of them, 
because the conditions in which they functioned 
have quite changed, we take the course of least 
resistance and develop a bad philosophy to justify 
the inertia which retains them. But to do so we 
make our students suffer and ourselves become 
blind leaders of the blind. 

Is all kjiow ledge instriimental? Are all studies 
instrumental ? Professor Keyser, in his brilliant 

[187] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

paper on mathematics,-^ says " no." " Not in the 
ground of need, not in bent and painful toil, but in 
the deep-centred play-instinct of the world, in the 
joyous mood of the eternal Being, which is always 
young, science has her origin and root ; and her 
spirit, which is the spirit of genius in moments of 
elevation, is but a sublimated form of play, the 
austere and lofty analogue of the kitten playing 
with the entangled skein or of the eaglet sporting 
w^ith the mountain winds." But it must not be 
forgotten that there is method in this playfulness. 
There is the most intimate relation between play 
and work. Both the eaglet and the kitten, as they 
play, are rehearsing their ancestors' work and 
getting ready for their own. If the same is not 
true of the human playfulness which Professor 
Keyscr is convinced that science is, why do the 
activities of this play stick so close to the interests 
which we define as work ? To be sure science is 
exploratory. It endeavors to run ahead of human 
need and to anticipate its problems before they 
arise, to lay up a treasure of knowledge before it 
is called for, but that is by no micans the same 
thing as solving puzzles just because there is 
nothing more serious to do. If it be said that 
knowledge is due to two instincts, — curiosity and 
self-preservation, — it must be noted that, racially 

1 Cassius J. Keyser, Mathematics. The Columbia University Press, 1907. 

[188] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

speaking, these are at bottom one. The eye is 
ever moving up and down, to the right and to the 
left, searching out the field before it, seeking to 
light upon an object of its interest. Thus curiosity, 
like the hunter's dog beating the bush to raise 
whatever game there may be for the hunter, scours 
the plain in the service of self-preservation. If 
science is held to be the product of the play spirit 
because, forsooth, if she were a daughter of work 
she would be less beautiful and holy, it need only 
be pointed out that all that she gains in poetical 
freedom by this genealogy she loses in seriousness. 
At any rate, there is another point of view as to 
her function. One of the greatest of modern 
thinkers, Immanuel Kant, has stated it: "I am 
myself a student by inclination, I feel the whole 
thirst for knowledge, and the covetous restlessness 
that demands to advance in it, and again the satis- 
faction of every step of progress. There was a time 
when I believed that all this might constitute the 
honor of humanity, and I despised the crowd that 
knows nothing. It was Rousseau who set me right. 
That dazzling privilege disappeared, and I should 
think myself far less useful than common artisans, 
if I did not believe that my line of study might 
impart value to all others in the way of establishing 
the rights of humanity." -^ 

1 Kant, Werke, 8, p. 624. Hartenstein. 

[189] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

What should education attempt to do ? Now if 
education should leave off its " inveterate human 
trick of turning names into things," give over its 
word worship, and ask what can I do for all these 
hopeful young people who trust their lives to me, 
what form should the answer take? This, I think. 
One cannot walk for another, speak for another, or 
digest for another. No more can he feel for another, 
have problems for another, think for another, or be 
wise or good for another. Education in the last 
analysis is a peculiarly personal affair. It has to 
do almost wholly with the man within. From the 
objective standpoint it is the process in which the 
young, surrounded by specially prepared oppor- 
tunities, make their own knowledge and their own 
conduct each for himself. Since knowledge and 
conduct are but the two parts of the same sensory- 
motor arc, what they themselves do makes their 
knowledge, and this knowledge again shapes their 
conduct, which again brings further knowledge and 
is followed by correspondingly enlarged conduct. 
This reciprocal relation constitutes the warp and 
the woof of their ever-weaving experience. As it 
is with them, so it has been with the race since the 
beginning. From its doings the race has learned, 
and by its learning its doings have been reshaped. 
By many times taking the wrong road and some- 
times the right one, it has accumulated a kind of 

[190] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

geography of life which it puts at the service of the 
new travelers who are setting out upon the journey. 
As each one of them must choose the course he 
will take and as each one will choose a course 
which is different from that of his fellows, these 
directions are not put in the imperative form, — 
" Take this baggage and march ten parasangs to 
the west, then four to the south, and you will come 
to the city of Delight," — but are stated declara- 
tively, — " Two and two make four," " Blankets 
keep out the cold," " The very principle of ethics 
lies in the effort to think well." Though these 
things are not said in the imperative form, there is 
no value in saying them unless those to whom they 
are addressed hear them, feel their force, and shape 
their conduct accordingly. They are indeed hypo- 
thetical injunctions, carefully tested systems of 
advice worked out by our elders in the hope that 
we will use them. They do not ask us merely to 
acknowledge the existence of their experience, but 
to feel it and, having an inward persuasion of its 
force, to use it. 

Now of all this stored-up experience of the race, 
some parts are so indispensable that all must learn 
to use them no matter what the particular form 
their lives may take. These are the elementary 
doings of the race — using language, reading, writ- 
ing, numbering, building up a notion of the space 

[191] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

relations in which men exist, and of the time rela- 
tions which have conditioned and limited them and 
those who went before them, and learning how to 
live with their fellows by both outer and self- 
imposed control. Every one of these elementary 
subjects is a doing on the part of the student. The 
so-called higher courses of the secondary school, 
the college, and the university are only further 
doings, longer apprenticeships undertaken for a 
more complete mastery of these same racial tools. 
Having acquired some degree of skill in using 
these tools which all must use, the student goes 
in most cases from the elementary school, in some 
from the high school, and in a few from the col- 
lege, either to the trade school or into an appren- 
tice grade in life to acquire a special degree of skill 
in performing the work of some one occupation, 
the product of which has an exchange value. But 
doing is no less his object in the case of the funda- 
mental arts than in the case of the trade which he 
learns. When I was a student in the law school, 
the professor used to say : " Our object is not to 
teach you the law so that you will know it. There 
is far too much of it for that. Our task is simply 
to help you to learn how to find it." So is that of 
the teacher of reading, spelling, numbering, history, 
literature, science, and philosophy. We cannot be 
taught any of these subjects in their completeness. 

[192] 



LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 

In fact no one of them is complete, but we can be 
given such a familiarity with them that we shall 
find them indispensable henceforth and by means 
of this familiarity with them go on finding them 
out for ourselves as the need for them arises. 

Even culture is a doing. " Culture or education 
is, as we may thus conclude," says Hegel, " in its 
ultimate sense a liberation, and that of a high kind. 
Its task is to make possible the infinitely subjective 
substantiality of the ethical life. ... In the indi- 
vidual agent this liberation involves a struggle 
against mere subjectivity, immediate desire, sub- 
jective vanity, and capricious liking. The hardness 
of the task is in part the cause of the disfavor 
under which it falls. None the less it is through 
the labor of education that the subjective will wins 
possession of the objectivity, in which alone it is 
able and worthy to be the embodiment of the 
idea."^ And again: "Culture is certainly an in- 
definite expression. It has, however, this meaning, 
that what free thought is to attain must come out 
of itself and be personal conviction ; it is then no 
longer believed but investigated. ... In culture 
it is requisite that men should be acquainted with 
the universal points of view which belong to a 
transaction, event, etc., that this point of view, and 
thereby the thing, should be grasped in a universal 

1 Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Dyde's translation), sect. 187 note. 
[193] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

way, in order to afford a present knowledge of 
what is in question. A judge knows the various 
laws, that is, the various legal points of view under 
which a thing is to be considered. ... A man of 
culture thus knows how to say something of 
everything, to find points of view in all." ^ 

Education, then, is the process by which the 
learner in his own person comes to take the uni- 
versal points of view and begins by their aid to 
investigate his experience and to shape it to fit 
his need. The circle of knowledge through which 
he is led to the universal viewpoints by which the 
race has found it profitable to take and organize its 
experience of inorganic and organic nature, and 
the thinking, willing, and aesthetic activity of the 
human spirit, is but a guide to help him to exercise 
this same mastery for himself. 

1 Hegel, History of Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 356. London, 1892. 



[194] 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

Comprchensibility a test of hiow ledge. Professor 
Keyser begins his illuminating discussion of mathe- 
matics ^ by citing the conviction of the French 
mathematician, Gergonne, that a given scientific 
theory cannot be said to have been perfected 
until it is comprehensible to the man in the street. 
Plato seems to have reached this same conclusion, 
for he regarded dialectic as the coping stone of 
the sciences and described it as the art of asking 
and answering questions ; and in the " Thesetetus " 
he made Socrates say : "And is it not shameless 
when we do not know what knowledge is, to be 
explaining the verb, ' to know ' ? The truth is, 
Thesetetus, that we have long been infected with 
logical impurity. Thousands of times, have we 
repeated the words 'we know' and Mo not know' 
and *we have or have not science or knowledge,' 
as if we could understand what we are saying to 
one another, so long as we remain ignorant about 
knowledge ; and at this moment we are using the 

1 Cassius J. Keyser, Mathematics. The Columbia University Press, 
1907. 

[195] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

words ' we understand,' ' we are ignorant,' as though 
we could still employ them when deprived of 
knowledge or science. 

" The^.tetus. But if you avoid these expressions, 
Socrates, how will you ever argue at all ? 

" Socrates. I could not, being the man I am. 
The case would be different if I were a true hero 
of dialectic ; and O that such an one were present ! 
for he would have told us to avoid the use of these 
terms ; and at the same time he would not have 
spared in you and me the faults which I have 
noted." 

Dialectic, then, or the art of asking and answer- 
ing questions, is the process of stripping the verbal 
mask from truth and producing conviction unob- 
scured by language in the mind of the inquirer. 
To so thoroughly convince himself that his words 
will indubitably generate a similar conviction in 
others is the task of the " true hero of dialectic." 
There are a number of terms to be made compre- 
hensible before education can be such a science. 

The importance of method. If education is the 
growth of the kingdom which is within, not the 
communication of dogma from without but a con- 
stant appeal to the inner reference of feeling, 
thought, and action, the method to be employed 
would seem to be the most important of all the 
considerations which attach to it. Like true religion 

[196] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

and undefiled it calls for something more than lip 
service in the temple of knowledge, something 
more than the memorizing of words or even of 
the thoughts of other men. If the only real edu- 
cation is the self-education of the student, how 
he is taught science, literature, languages, history, 
mathematics, and even the three fundamental arts 
makes all the difference between real education 
and make-believe, which is a great deal worse than 
no education at all. It is not hard for anyone who 
will consider these things seriously for a moment 
to convince himself that geometry, for example, 
may be the most fruitful of studies or the most 
empty of comprehension on the part of the learner, 
depending wholly upon the standpoint from which 
he approaches it. Mr. Herbert Spencer darec' to 
" doubt if one boy in five hundred . . . knows 
his Euclid otherwise than by rote." Does the prop- 
osition read the other way to-day ? Yet mathe- 
maticians have pointed out that it is no more 
profitable or educative to commit the theorems 
and demonstrations of geometry than it is to 
commit the names in the city directory. Has our 
teaching of science, from which so much was 
expected, engendered the scientific mood in our 
students ? Does it lead to a scientific habit of 
mind ? Do those who pursue it acquire scientific 
method and learn to systematize knowledge, or do 

[197] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

they instead merely learn a few facts which have 
been systematized ? Professor Mann has declared 
his conviction that better results will not come 
from the teaching of physics until its teachers 
have a better philosophy of the teaching of that 
subject and in a recent number of Science^ he has 
indicated quite clearly what he means by that. 

Take the venerable subject of Latin, which in 
the days of its larger functioning furnished such 
profitable opportunities to be active-minded to the 
students who pursued it. It is my duty to see 
a good deal of high-school instruction, and what 
I have seen of the teaching of this study is not 
reassuring. I once entered a classroom while the 
class was engaged upon that passage of the oration 
for Archias in which Cicero attempts to make 
the thoughts of his auditors rise to the nature of 
the poet's mission. To do so he refers to " our 
Ennius," the author of the " Annals," the father 
of Latin poetry, "who calls the poets holy, for 
they seem, as it were, to be approved to us by a 
special gift and favor of the gods." This is a tre- 
mendous saying, and I waited with eagerness to 
hear what sort of a question the teacher would ask 
on such a passage. It came, "Why is videantur in 
the subjunctive mood ? " I visited another classroom 
in another school while the class was reading the 

1 Science, March 7, 1913. 

[198] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

fourteenth chapter of that first book, in which 
Caesar tells of a conference which the German 
chieftain Divico and his retainers attended and 
how Cassar addressed them, urging them to be 
peaceable and to send him hostages as a guaranty 
that they would be. Whereat the German chieftain 
arose and gave expression to but one sentiment, 
" Our fathers have taught us to receive and not to 
give hostages," and with that broke up the confer- 
ence. I waited intently for the question that the 
teacher would ask, for from that German love of 
liberty which would not submit to be crushed 
out by mighty Rome herself, much that we hold 
dear has come down to us, and there in that remote 
forest two majestic conflicting forces in civilization 
faced each other for a moment and expressed their 
opposing ideals; and the question came, What 
mood follows titP. I went into still another class- 
roorti in still another school where students who 
were just beginning their study of the Latin gram- 
mar were engaged in writing a synopsis of the 
verb upon the blackboard. All went well until 
one student committed the mistake of attempting 
to write a perfect imperative, that disturbed the 
peace of the occasion. When the teacher saw it 
her reproof took the form : " You know that there 
is no such form in the book. You must follow 
your authority. Watch it closely and don't let this 

[ 199 ] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

happen again." There was no calHng attention 
to the impossibiHty of giving an order to-day and 
having it carried out yesterday. Like Mr. Spencer's 
committing of geometry and Professor Manns 
verbal repeating of the definitions of physics, what 
I have seen in many places leads me to believe 
that these are examples of the typical teaching of 
Latin. They tend to convince one that we get 
poor results because we do not go after better ones. 
Methods are wrong because ptirposes are not clear. 
It is much the same in the elementary schools. We 
teach our pupils a kind of word sounding which 
we call reading, but we do not often teach them to 
read. We teach them letter shaping, but we do not 
see that they carry the process into effect in their 
compositions and examination books, and we usu- 
ally give up instructing them in handwriting before 
adolescence has changed their penmanship, very 
much as it changes the voice. They spend weary 
hours in performing processes in arithmetic which 
no longer find their counterpart in business calcula- 
tions, and much of that which is taught them which 
is usable is put in such an abstract form that when 
the occasion for its use arises it is unrecognizable 
by them. We teach a schoolroom manipulation of 
language, called grammar, but it does not seem to 
function beyond the schoolroom. Our geography 
tends to be an exercise with very confusing and 

[ 200 ] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

difficult names, while history is a dry study which 
students commonly get by heart. The defects which 
we have noted in the teaching of geometry, physics, 
and Latin are to be found also in the teaching of 
English, modern languages, chemistry, and in most 
of the other studies of the secondary school and 
the college. Either we have been aiming at the 
wrong results or we have not aimed carefully 
enough to hit what we are aiming at. Only a pro- 
founder study of the method which education must 
employ in order to be education will tell us what 
the results are which we should be aiming at and 
how we should set about getting them. This word, 
method, has come into undeserved disrepute be- 
cause it has been used to designate the rule-of- 
thumb devices and the teaching tricks with which 
badly conducted normal schools have sought to 
equip their students for the work of teaching. But 
it is much too significant a term to be harmed by 
such association for any but the thoughtless. 

What is educational 7nethod? Method is a some- 
what formidable word but its meaning is very sim- 
ple — it is always a way of going to work to get 
certain results which we want. What we want to 
do determines how we shall go at it, so in order 
that one may go at anything methodically he must 
first determine what he wants to do. That is his 
aim, his purpose, or his undertaking. It is only 

[20I] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

when he has found out quite definitely what he 
wants to do that he is ready to consider methods of 
doing it. When one knows that he wants to go to 
Chicago, he must next pick out the route and the 
train. When one knows what kind of a house he 
wants to build, he is ready to have a detailed plan 
made, and after that to employ a contractor or a 
carpenter to construct it for him. Method is noth- 
ing more nor less than the orderly routine to be 
followed in seeking to accomplish definite results. 
It is an outline of the steps to be taken, a plan 
indicating what we must do first, and what next, 
and what after that. Everyday speech has words 
and phrases for many different kinds of methods. 
Men talk as though there were one way of setting 
to work to build a house, another way of preparing 
to fight a battle, another way to go about governing 
a city, and other ways of going to work to make 
experiments, teach children, study lessons, etc. The 
fact is that all of these things call for much the same 
sort of planning. First the person who would do 
them must determine what he is setting out to do. 
Next he must collect the materials w^hich are avail- 
able for his purpose. Then he must allow his mate- 
rials to redefine his purpose, for when he gets them 
together he usually finds that they will not permit 
him to do just what he originally planned, that is, 
they set a new problem very much more concrete 

[ 202 ] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

and definite than that with which he started, and 
frequently they give it a quite unexpected turn. He 
must now proceed to work out this new problem 
and shape or formulate his results. These are the 
stages, or steps, in what is called scientific method. 
It is nothing mysterious, but an orderly, or sys- 
tematic, way of going to work with any subject 
matter whatever. Scientists with almost one ac- 
cord, claiming no special property in it, have insisted 
that men should use it in all their undertakings. 
They declare that the first step in any conscious 
process is to find out what is to be done, that the 
second step is to examine one's materials, that the 
third step is to decide what they seem to tell him, 
to organize them tentatively, that the fourth step is 
to find out if this thought of them will stand the 
test, and that the fifth step is to act accordingly. 
Educational method, like scientific method in 
general, is nothing more nor less than a system- 
atic consideration of the task which education 
undertakes in the conviction that nothing short of 
such an investigation will lay bare its real pur- 
poses and the steps which are to be taken. A 
methodic examination of its work classifies it under 
the two great headings " ends " and '' means." It 
assumes that an undertaking which takes so many 
of the years of the young, so much of the wealth 
of the land, and which makes so vast a difference 

[203] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

to the future is much too serious to be shaped by 
the dead hand of tradition or by unexamined opin- 
ions, no matter who may hold them. So responsible 
a task requires study. But through a strange per- 
versity Plato's warning, that the ills of mankind 
cannot be expected to cease until the thinker 
becomes the director of human affairs, has hardly 
been more completely disregarded in any calling 
than in education. Our makers of educational opin- 
ion have employed the doctrine of formal discipline 
to justify themselves with a vengeance. Before 
assuming educational leadership, they found it nec- 
essary to make themselves expert in the work 
of their several callings and have trusted to that 
specialized expertness in some mysterious way to 
qualify them as authorities upon education. Under 
their guidance education has become institution- 
alized, repeating its virtues of the days before, and 
its vices, too, for not many of those who direct it 
have been trained to expertness in it. 

Yet surely the education of the young is not so 
light a thing that a man has but to wush for knowl- 
edge about it to have it. If " the art of shaping 
human powers and fitting them to social uses " ^ 
is " the supreme art," it assuredly calls for the best 
and not the most indifferent of artists. No one 
nowadays thinks of offering himself as an authority 

1 John Dewey, My Educational Creed. 
[204] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

in medicine who has not taken pains to study medi- 
cine, yet the art of education is more difficult than 
that of medicine. To be sure, medicine now has 
a respectable body of tested, conceptualized experi- 
ences which everyone who would practice it must 
assimilate before he is allowed to begin, but educa- 
tion, too, is not without its tested experiences which 
should be consulted by everyone who professes to 
follow its calling seriously. These two sciences have 
much in common ; they are both clearly practical. 
Both borrow heavily from other sciences ; yet 
neither is content to take these contributions 
without reshaping them to its own use. In each 
a definite organizing principle determines what 
must be undertaken and what is pertinent. This 
is only another way of saying that method is the 
chief concern of each of them. 

What method mtist do. Method must determine 
the course of the educational journey, for if it is 
indifferent how one shall travel, it is indifferent 
whether one shall go at all. Everyone knows in a 
general way what that is. There is the individual, 
on the one hand, and the world in which he must 
live, on the other. Men have been living here a 
long time and have accumulated a great deal of 
knowledge which somehow or other must guide 
each new traveler. But how shall these two terms 
of the educational equation be brought together.? 

[ 205 ] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

Just what is the result which we seek? Again, 
what parts of this knowledge shall we make the 
child take account of? There is a lot of it — some 
of it is vastly important and some is not. Is there 
any principle by which we may select it ? Does 
it make any difference what kind of a mind the 
learner has ? 

His own doing must be directed to the doing of 
those acts which the race has found indispensable 
to its well-being. Science, religion, literature, gov- 
ernment must be born again in him. That part of 
the directive knowledge which the race puts at his 
disposal which he can use, he must master not 
statically but dynamically. Not all that passes for 
knowledge is directive, but unless it works it is not 
knowledge. So out with that part of it which be- 
longs only to erudition or with that large part which 
is professional only to the scholar. The student 
need not concern himself with that until he begins 
to prepare for the special calling to which it per- 
tains. The land which is common to untechnical 
pursuits is, however, vast in extent. He must pre- 
empt no more of it than he can till. It is uneco- 
nomical for society to allow him to claim title to 
more of this field than he can make produce. 

The airn of education. But what kind of a crop 
must he grow? A social crop. Education is to 
make him into a social factor. " Pedagogy," says 

[ 206 ] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

Hegel, " is the art of making men ethical. It looks 
upon man as natural and points out the way in 
which he is to be born again. His first nature 
must be converted into a second spiritual nature in 
such a manner that the spiritual becomes in him 
a habit." ^ The particular must be universalized. 
One's private instincts, desires, emotions, thoughts, 
and deeds must be rationalized. His instincts must 
be socialized, his desires must be civilized, his 
emotions must learn to love and hate aright, his 
thoughts must be ordered, and in his deeds it must 
be not his private self but the good which worketh. 
In other words, he must learn to do as he would 
be done by, think from the standpoint of the race, 
"have sound social feeling if his doings are to be 
deeds, not misdeeds," make his desires wholesome, 
and regulate his instincts to social ends. In short, 
he must become a person. This we are told is 
the highest aim of man. Individuality is only its 
possibility. It is not until the individual learns to 
want what God wants, to will the will of God, that 
he becomes free. " The very essence of personality 
is our implicit or explicit identification of ourselves 
with some particular traits of mind, for the weakest 
personality is that which possesses no particular 
psychical traits at all." The development of per- 
sonality, then, is the object of education. And this 

1 Hegel (Uyde's translation), Philosophy of Right, 151. 
[207] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

development consists in the conscious building up 
within the learner of certain racially useful traits 
of mind. He must direct his will to their attain- 
ment. He must make himself the owner of the 
personality which he would have. Though social 
achievement furnishes the model, he himself must 
paint the picture. The origin of the word is sig- 
nificant of the method by which personality is 
acquired. It comes from the Latin personare^ 
meaning " to sound through," and referring to the 
actor's habit of speaking through a mask. A per- 
sonality is the result of personating. To put on 
Christian personality means to personate a Chris- 
tian ; to put on moral personality, to personate a 
moral man ; to put on intellectual personality, to 
personate an intellectual man. In the Roman law 
a person is a human being invested with legal 
rights and liable for the performance of corre- 
sponding duties, a being who can do and does 
certain things. Therefore a child, an insane person, 
or a slave, who could not under the law perform 
these acts, were not persons. The individual puts 
on personality by personating or identifying himself 
with the preferred traits of the species. Though 
an individual he learns to live the life of his kind. 
By this personating of the social part, individuality 
is transformed into personality. 

If this inwrought personality is our ideal of 

[208] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

education, must not all that is learned be in- 
wrought in order that this may be its culmination ? 
We cannot strive for an autonomy of conscience 
without an autonomy of consciousness. The moral 
personality is only the mental personality function- 
ing in one direction. It is the mental personality 
that we must seek to develop, and it can be 
brought to being only by the individual identify- 
ing himself with, or making his own, certain spe- 
cific social traits of mind. When we speak of 
a moral personality we intend to refer to the fact 
that the person who has developed it has made 
his instincts and desires to act under all cir- 
cumstances in certain systematic ways. When we 
speak of a mental personality we intend to refer 
to a similar achievement in mental organization, to 
the fact that capacities have learned to work in 
socially approved, specifically useful ways. The man 
with a trained body is one who has learned both 
how to use it and to use it to accomplish certain 
social ends, such as health, work, pleasure, self- 
defense. He has wrought out for himself a certain 
physical attitude or temper and can be depended 
upon to act regularly according to it. The man 
whom we think of as a moral personality has estab- 
lished no less definitely organized moral reactions. 
He has certain traits of character. We say of such 
an one we always know where to find him. He has 

[209] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

identified himself with a specific type of conduct. 
Through all the shifts of circumstance he preserves 
a steady demeanor, maintaining in the midst of trials 
and temptations the right opinion of things to be 
feared and not to be feared, for the man within 
him has chosen to value and to do in these ways. 
Just so the mental personality has learned specific 
methods of attack, of deliberating, of searching, of 
conjecturing, of trying out his conjectures, and of 
formulating his conclusions. He does not differ 
from other men in the things which concern him, 
for human interests are common to us all ; but he 
does differ from them in the way he goes to work — 
in that he converts his experience into questions or 
problems which he does not dismiss with a word, 
but toward which he maintains the suspended judg- 
ment, ceaselessly collecting information which has 
a bearing upon them and, in the light of what he 
finds, recasting his problem and testing what seems 
to be the answer until he is quite sure that he 
has reached it. '' The typically scientific mind may 
be described as one which stands in a definite rela- 
tion to as-yet-unknown Truth, and especially to that 
portion of the as-yet-unknown which is just below 
the horizon of knowledge," says Mrs. Boole. " In 
proportion as a mind is non-scientific, the occur- 
rence of an unfamiliar phenomenon stimulates it 
to form some immediate classification or judgment. 

[2IO] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

A new statement is hailed at once as ' true ' or 
' false ' ; a new fact is classified as * good ' or ' bad,' 
' nice ' or ' nasty ' ; an unfamiliar action is ' right ' or 
'wrong.' In proportion as a mind is scientific, the 
occurrence of a new phenomenon tends to set it 
vibrating with a consciousness of coming revelation 
and to start a certain cycle of mental attitudes, a 
cycle of the following kind, homage, attention, ob- 
servation, analysis, antithesis, synthesis, contempla- 
tion, effacement, repose, judgment or classification. 
The cycle varies in duration ; each phase may 
occupy a few seconds or many months, or even 
years; but the tendency to fall into some such 
sequence as that above described at the touch of a 
new fact is what constitutes the essentially scientific 
condition. " ^ 

The mental personality is one which has learned 
to work in a certain effective way. Like the phys- 
ical or the moral, it is an inwrought mode of action. 
How can it be developed? Professor Thomson 
italicizes his answer, " T/ie scientific temper must be 
wrought out by each one for himself. " ^ 

It is of much more importance that one should 
develop the scientific mood than that he should 
amass the facts of chemistry, physics, or biology, 

1 M. E. Boole, Preparation of the Child for Science, p. 15. The 
Clarendon Press, 1904. 

2 Thomson, Introduction to Science, p. 33. Home University Library. 

[211] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

and it is of very much more importance that one 
should develop the emotional mood than that he 
should know all that there is to be known about 
the poetry of Shelley or Shakespeare. 

Superiority of ^"^ knozu ledge of to ^^ kuow ledge 
abouty If the organizing of this kind of a person- 
ality within himself on the part of each student is 
the aim of education, Professor James's distinction 
between the two kinds of knowledge is vitally 
important. It is the knowledge of science, lan- 
guages, literature, history, mathematics, philosophy, 
and the other socially profitable ways of dealing 
with human experience which we must strive for, 
for while knowledge of them requires knowl- 
edge about them, knowledge aboiit them does not 
necessarily include knowledge of them. Pine wood 
is a social fact of importance perhaps to everyone 
at some time or other in his existence. One may 
know a great deal about it, but only the boy who 
has split it and broken it into kindling lengths, who 
has planed it and sawed it, has a knowledge of it. 
Just so, it is one thing to know about English and 
quite another thing to know it. The same is true 
of French or geography or physics, indeed of every 
subject which we study. Knowledge is personal, 
it is the identification of the self with the traits 
of experience which they present. And knowledge 
of them every student can have if his teacher has 

[212] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

but once considered its superiority to knowledge 
about them and has organized his work to make it 
possible. But, it will be said, to get a knowledge 
of pine is easy since one can take it into his own 
hands and manipulate it to his own purposes, while 
one cannot take history or geography into his own 
hands and manipulate them. Not so. It is just as 
easy to work with literature or history or geography 
as it is with pine wood. The working is no less 
working because in the case of the pine wood there 
is a larger manual element than in the other. It 
is mental working that the race chiefly values, and 
that each student may learn to perform it in a satis- 
factory manner for himself is the reason for his 
being sent to school. It is easy to see that when 
he studies reading, writing, and arithmetic it is 
what he learns to do that concerns us. It is not 
so clear that when he studies history our chief aim 
is to train him to historize, or geography to geogra- 
phize, or geology to geologize. Yet, as we have 
seen, these several studies are only ways in which 
the race has learned to handle its experience, and 
our study of them is a challenge to us to begin 
handling our experience in their ways. It may 
seem that it is much easier to identify oneself with 
that racially profitable trait which is the practice 
of numbering and calculating than with those 
other racially profitable traits which we have called 

[213] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

historizing or geographizing, because when we study 
arithmetic we ourselves solve problems and come 
to think of ourselves as problem solvers while in 
history or geography we only take instead of doing. 
That is due to the way we teach these studies, not 
to the studies themselves. They come to us just as 
the pine wood does — as something given. They 
challenge us to work with them, to ask questions of 
them, to search in them for the answers to our own 
questions, to rearrange their material, to learn to 
handle their concepts, to make our own generaliza- 
tions, and then to try them out for ourselves. 
When one studies history he does so in order to 
make his own historic interpretation, to construct 
his own outline of the way events have succeeded 
events in time ; when geography, to make his own 
picture of the way the conditions of human life 
affect each other in space. He learns to think 
historically and to think geographically. Just so, 
'' poetry," we are told, " exists only in the reflective 
consciousness." ^ " The poem, like the picture and 
the sonata, is no copy of nature ; its appeal is to the 
imagination which is contemplative, and not to that 
which is merely reproductive." ^ To study them one 
must use his own mind, and every science as well 
as every art seems to have that same challenge to 

1 Haldane, The Pathway to ReaHty, Vol. II, 183. New York, 1905. 

2 Ibid. 185. 

[214] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

us as its chief reason for existing. If it could speak 
it would say to us, " Learn how to handle my sub- 
ject matter, learn how to work with my concepts, 
see if you can frame questions like those which the 
man wiio shaped me framed, see if you can search 
out their answers, see if you can organize and 
reorganize my material and solve problems with 
my aid." 

Importance of the context in co7i7iection with 
which processes are acquired. One cannot develop 
the mood by itself; he must have a content about 
which he may develop it. It makes a difference 
what that particular content is in connection with 
which he attempts to develop his personal system 
of reactions. It must not be one which makes the 
habitual attitudes we seek to engender in him 
impossible. On the other hand, it must contain 
plenty of middle terms or elements common to it 
and to the subsequent experience to which it is 
intended that the same methods of reaction shall 
be applied. For unless the new situation is recog- 
nizably identical with the old familiar one, it cannot 
call for a similar response. The learning which 
would provide methods of handling it must be kin- 
dred to it. The concepts without their normally 
experienced percepts are empty, and blind as well. 
This is perhaps the greatest fallacy of modern 
education, that it seeks to set up the reactions 

[215] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

which it values in connection with a content which 
is nonrepresentative and leaves the student with 
the conviction that he has learned nothing that 
is applicable to anything outside of school. The 
subject matter of the course of study cannot be 
selected because it lends itself most readily to class- 
room manipulation. To choose it for that reason is 
to consider only the advantage of the teacher. It is 
not teaching which must be made easy, but learn- 
ing, and to empty it of intelligible meaning which 
the student can lay hold of is to make it to him 
a vain, conventional thing. What is taught in the 
school is just as valuable there as it is in the world 
outside the school and no more valuable. It is for 
their world value and not for any abstract school 
value that studies must be selected. The content, 
then, makes an enormous difference to the learner 
in terms of interest and comprehension when he 
is learning, and in terms of usability in after days. 
Futurity is not only the great concern of mankind ; 
it is peculiarly the concern of youth. It is toward 
things to come that education must face. The 
several disciplines are tools which the race has 
found it as necessary to use as the hammer, the 
oar, and the skinning knife. They are valuable 
just in so far as they serve. But institutionalized 
education being only a part of a whole process, 
that part which instructs but does not try out 

[216] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

the results of its instruction has cut itself away 
from its own corrective. One body of men teaches ; 
another body tries out the results of their teaching. 
The educational producer is rarely the consumer. 
If he were he could be trusted, for he would apply 
the pragmatic test to his own work. As he is not, 
the sufficiency of what he does is not tested by 
its outcome but by the traditions which support it. 
As a result, education tends to remain uncritical 
and irrational. It does not strive for a clear com- 
prehension of its end, and it exhibits an undue 
love for a merely traditional course of study. 

What sJwuld be studied? The object of the 
course of study is undoubtedly to put at the dis- 
posal of the student that body of concepts, methods, 
and reports of percepts which, when made his own 
by use, will enable him to shape his conduct with 
a minimum of wasteful experimenting, .in ways 
which the race has found to bring profitable results. 
Every subject in it gained its place there because 
of its manifest utility at the time it was admitted. 
But the changing universe has run away from some 
of the studies. They have lost their utility, but 
they still keep their place in the course as though 
they retained it. Consequently the course of study 
has become ritualistic — the spirit of life has, in 
a measure, gone out of it. If it were framed with 
forethought and design, would it contain just that 

[217] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

which it now contains? In this connection certain 
queries constantly recur to me which I find that 
I cannot answer. The Greek word logos means 
"word," and it also means "idea" or "thought." 
Why is it that education limits its interest so 
largely to the word and neglects the thought ? 
Education, we are told over and over again, is pri- 
marily linguistic. Should this be so ? Was it not 
John Milton who said, " And though a linguist 
should pride himself to have all the tongues that 
Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied 
the solid things in them as well as the words and 
lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed 
a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman com- 
petently wise in his mother dialect only " ? Why 
in place of studying the Greek grammar or even 
the Greek language do we not read the "solid 
things " in the literature of that remarkable people ? 
If Rome's great contribution to civilization was law 
and orderly administration, why does our study of 
Latin not undertake to lead us to some knowledge 
of the nature of Rome's greatest gift to the world ? 
Why instead of confining our students to English 
literature do we not first make them acquainted 
with the first-class literature of mankind ? Is there 
any really good and sufiicient reason why the stu- 
dent in the general courses should not know his 
Homer, his Plato, his Dante, and Cervantes as well 

[218] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

as his Shakespeare ? Why in place of the more re- 
mote aspects of mathematics do not such homely 
and commonly used matters as the theory and prac- 
tice of statistics, graphs, simple projective geometry, 
and mechanical drawing come in for general atten- 
tion ? Why do we not give as much attention to 
physical training as the Greeks did? We know that 
it is more necessary than they did, and we know 
more about scientific ways of instructing in it. 
Why do we not teach each person the elements of 
health protection ? Why, though we say that the 
object of education is preparation for intelligent 
citizenship, do we not teach each person the ele- 
ments of law? Why, when we say that the object 
of education is morality, do we trust to incidental 
and indirect instruction to generate clear notions of 
what morality is ? Why, when we say that one of 
our chief objects is to teach scientific method, do 
we not from his very beginning in the elementary 
school involve each student in a critical search for 
the reasons for common things ? Why when we 
study the languages, do we not learn to use them ? 
Why is not everyone taught shorthand, type- 
writing, and the elements of accounting? Why is 
it not part of our theory of general education to 
teach everyone a trade, as Locke and Rousseau 
recommended ? Why do we not teach every student 
how to study? 

[219] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION ? 

Fittincr studies to stttdcnts. But the course of 
study is not the only feature of education which 
calls for the application of method ; the selection of 
the students who should be allowed to pursue the 
several studies is no less important. " Not more 
than half the students in my class in geometry 
could study the subject otherwise than by rote," 
says a very skillful teacher. " What am I to do 
with the others ? " Custom says, " Teach them by 
rote and give them a passing mark at the end of the 
term " ; but custom is not critical. Is it fair to de- 
lude them or to delude ourselves into believing that 
they are profiting by pursuing geometry when they 
cannot learn it otherwise than by rote? Assuming 
that these are the facts, does it not follow that we 
have a duty to keep them out of the geometry class 
and other classes in which the same thing happens, 
and to direct them to studies which they can pur- 
sue to advantage ? This is a large subject and one 
with which education is only beginning to concern 
itself seriously. Each one is born with natural apti- 
tudes. Fortunately we cannot all follow the same 
calling. Cooperative social life is made possible by 
the fact that nature equipped us in some measure 
to be specialists. Plato, who was the first to exam- 
ine education profoundly, advised the use of thor- 
oughgoing trials and tests to determine what sort 
of studies each one was fitted to pursue. For him 

[ 220] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

the education which the individual required could 
not be decided by birth or the occupation of his 
father. He must himself be consulted as to his fit- 
ness, and having proved it, the state could not 
neglect to give him adequate opportunity. Educa- 
tion could not afford to be a hit-or-miss affair. 
There can be no doubt that he was wiser in this 
respect than subsequent educational practice has 
been. His wisdom is beginning to be put into 
effect. The way to proceed is by no means clear. 
Yet scientific methods of fitting studies to students 
must somehow be found. 

The wise and enlightened selection of studies on 
the basis of their social value is one phase of edu- 
cation which calls for the elaboration of method. 
The no less wise and enlightened selection of the 
students whose aptitudes enable them to pursue 
these several studies with advantage to themselves 
and society is another. All this, however, though 
indispensable, is preliminary to the real work of 
teaching. When the subject has been determined 
and the class is there ready to begin its work, 
does it make any difference how the teacher pro- 
ceeds? The fact is that it does. We may spend 
millions in erecting school palaces ; we may gather 
the youth of the nation together in them ; we may 
employ an army of teachers to teach them just 
what they should know; but unless they are given 

[221] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

an opportunity to learn, the undertaking will be 
in vain. The test of teaching then is learning. 
That must be done by the students. 

Methods of instruction. Two methods and their 
variations are open to us. Both are very old, and 
both are Greek in their origin. The one is the 
method of Pythagoras, which enjoins the student 
to a long and awesome silence and requires that he 
sit outside the veil and only listen to the master's 
wisdom ; the other is the method of Socrates, " who 
spoke less than his scholars " and so wrought upon 
them that they discussed everything. The one is 
the service of the letter, which killeth; the other, 
the unlocking of the spirit, which is life. 

The recitation method. The modern master, before 
whose invisible presence we learn to maintain an 
awesome mental silence in our early years, is the 
maker of the textbook. To get our lesson means 
to get his words by heart. What is committed in 
the seats is repeated in the recitation. The teacher 
assigns the pages and hears the lesson " said." This 
is the recitation method. The word is used in a 
special sense — a recitation is a selected bit of 
poetry or prose committed to memory and recited 
aloud, but except that it has not to do with spe- 
cially selected poetry or prose, the ordinary recita- 
tion is just like the extraordinary one. I remember 
that when I began to study geometry, I was in 

[ 222 ] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

doubt what was expected of me and decided at a 
venture to memorize the theorems which were 
printed in itaHcs. When the teacher called for the 
proof of the theorem, I found that something more 
must be committed, though it seemed to me an un- 
just burden to put upon anyone to require him to 
memorize not only what someone else had found 
out to be true but the steps by which he had come 
to his conclusion. This makes a deadly dull busi- 
ness of studying. If drudgery, which is so forbid- 
ding that all men quite rightly seek to escape it, 
is work robbed of its meaning, this kind of work is 
drudgery, for the student sees no glimmer of mean- 
ing in it. Moreover it is equally devitalizing to 
the teacher, for it reduces him to a lesson-hearing 
machine. There are several degrees in this process. 
That one which employs memoriter learning most 
completely is called the examination method. The 
lesson is assigned. The pupils must prepare them- 
selves to recite it verbatim. The teacher calls them 
up in turn. Each one attempts to repeat the lesson. 
The teacher puts down a mark in a book when he 
has finished and signals to the next one to proceed. 
It is possible in this way to hear a whole class 
recite without saying a word. 

The ordinary recitation is a slight variation from 
this one. The main thing is still the repeating of 
the lesson, but the teacher sometimes gives a cue 

[223] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

when it has been forgotten, and once in a while 
cross-questions the students to see if they have 
the proper degree of familiarity with that which 
they have been learning. Quiz methods and review 
methods are usually only more elaborate forms of 
the recitation. It is distinguished from every other 
method by the fact that the class exercise is a 
recitation, that is, a rehearsal of what has been 
learned before the class exercise takes place. There 
are some studies, for example, history, geography, 
spelling, grammar, Latin, algebra, modern lan- 
guages, literature, etc. which many teachers believe 
admit of no other treatment. So commonly is the 
memoriter method employed that its prevalence 
has called forth the aphorism that " the German 
teacher teaches but the American teacher hears 
lessons." 

The lecture method. The recitation method is 
widely used in elementary and secondary schools. 
It is used, also, in colleges and sometimes in uni- 
versity teaching, but the more advanced instruction 
is given chiefly by lectures. The verb to lecttire 
means "to read." That method of instructing came 
into vogue in the medieval universities because 
books were scarce then and there was no other 
way in which the students might be put into pos- 
session of them so easily as by the teacher dictating 
their contents to them. Nowadays many lecturers 

[224] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

read, but some discourse upon their subject from 
brief written notes or discuss it extempore. To 
lecture is exceedingly profitable to the teacher, 
for it involves the systematizing to a high degree 
of his own knowledge upon the subject. It is a 
skillful, attractive, dignified, exceedingly stimulating, 
and irresponsive method of teaching. To present 
matters which must be brought together from 
many authorities, to rearrange outlines, to formulate 
conclusions or submit the results of one's own in- 
vestigations, perhaps, requires one to lecture. But 
It is a peculiarly unsuccessful method of teaching. 
Orators and lecturers, like books, can neither ask 
nor answer questions. They are monologists all. 

What is spoken cannot be reperused unless it 
is taken down, and only a part of it can be taken 
down. The student must become a copyist while 
the lecture is proceeding. If he studies his notes 
afterward, he studies only fragments of what the 
lecturer has said. The attitude which he is invited 
to take, and which he gets into the habit of taking, 
is passive and receptive. He is there to take knowl- 
edge, not to doubt, inquire, and investigate. He 
is not put into a position where he must think for 
himself. The only thing he must do is to memorize, 
but " to know by heart is not to know at all." 

Professor Osborn calls this " afferent, or inflow- 
ing mediaeval, and oriental kind of instruction in 

[225] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

which the student is rarely if ever forced to do 
his own thinking, the 'centripetal system.'" He 
declares himself an insurgent in education, al- 
together opposed to the '' overfeeding which stuffs, 
crams, pours in, spoon-feeds, and as a sort of death- 
bed repentance institutes creative work after grad- 
uation." He asks the students, "Is your idea of 
a good student that of a good * receptacle ' ? " " You 
should know that not a five foot shelf of books, 
not even the ardent reading of a fifty foot shelf 
aided by prodigious memory, will give you that 
enviable thing called culture, because the yard 
stick of this precious quality is not what you take 
in but what you give out, and this from the subtle 
chemistry of your brain must have passed through 
a mental metabolism of your own so that you have 
lent something to it."^ 

The trouble with both the recitation and the 
lecture method is that they are based upon a wrong 
theory of knowledge. No one can make knowledge 
for another any more than he can breathe for an- 
other. It is no ready-made thing which can be 
stored up in books and handed on in lectures. 
Each one out of his own awareness must build 
his world. The raw materials of knowledge, books, 
lectures, laboratories, and schools may provide, but 

1 Osborn/Huxley and Education, 26-28. Charles Scribner's Sons, New 
York, 19 ID. 

[226] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

there are subtle processes of questioning, feeling, 
thinking, assuming, testing, and using which each 
one must apply for himself in order to reduce these 
raw materials to essential parts of his own system. 

What determines zuhetJier a method is good or 
bad? I think we may say that methods of teach- 
ing are good just in the degree that they make 
the student a partner in the enterprise of learning. 
If he merely sits still and listens, he learns some- 
thing, but not much. If he reads his book and 
memorizes it, he learns more because he does 
more for himself. Can we not surround him with 
conditions which will involve him profoundly in 
the process of distinguishing, valuing, selecting, 
arranging, and using knowledge ? If the crown 
and fulfillment of education is the ability to do 
research work, at w^hat age must the student begin 
the work of searching ? The notion that searching 
is a method which can profitably be employed 
only in postgraduate instruction is completely 
disproved by what goes on in every kindergarten 
in the land. The comforting thing about that 
method is that it can be used in some degree 
in the teaching of practically every subject and 
in every grade of instruction. It requires simply 
that the learner shall be allowed to discover truth 
for himself, that he shall be put into the way of 
having his own experiences, formulating his own 

[227] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

concepts, and learning their meaning and how to 
use them by using them. How shall the student be 
induced to think for himself? How are the states 
of feeling out of which sensations and opinions 
arise to be generated ? 

The Socratic method. Fortunately the inventor 
and the most successful of all the users of the 
method, Socrates himself, has supplied the answer. 
Thinking " is the conversation which the soul 
holds with herself in considering of anything. I 
speak of what I scarcely understand ; but the 
soul when thinking appears to me to be just 
talking — asking questions of herself and answer- 
ing them, affirming and denying. And when she 
has arrived at a decision, either gradually or by 
a sudden impulse, and has at last agreed, and does 
not doubt, this is called her opinion. I say then 
that to form an opinion is to speak, and opinion 
is a word spoken — I mean to one's self and in 
silence, not aloud to another."^ But if thinking 
is speaking to one's self silently, does not audible 
speaking under conditions which do not supply 
the words or call for " mere conversation," but 
require us to hunt for what we should say, involve 
thinking also ? Was it not for this very reason that 
Socrates and Plato employed the conversational, 
or dialogue, method in their teaching? And was 

1 Plato, Theaetetus, 190. 

[228] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

it not that method as surely as the lofty character 
of the subjects which they led their students to 
investigate by it which made their instruction 
the most fruitful which has ever been given by 
teacher to pupil ? Their use of question and an- 
swer was due to the conviction that truth is a 
thing to be found out, not a thing which can be 
imparted. It is a singular circumstance in the 
history of culture that as soon as men abandoned 
their method and began to try to impart truth 
as something preestablished which has only to be 
handed down from teacher to student, the great 
age of intellectual discovery came to a close. 

The heuristic method. The Socratic method, 
then, shorn of the necessity which required the 
teacher' of mankind at Athens to prepare the 
way for it by first taking the conceit out of some 
of the men upon whom he used it, seems to be 
the one which makes real teaching possible. The 
heuristic method, the adoption of which has been 
so vigorously pleaded for in recent days, is nothing 
but the Socratic method modernized. The essence 
of this method is that the pupil must be the dis- 
coverer. All that is known which he is to learn 
must be rediscovered by him. To teach by this 
method does not mean to tell, but to ask. When 
difficulties paralyze the learner, he may be given 
a cue by a suggestion or a question which will 

[229] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

put him into action, but the teacher is there to 
occasion the problems, not to supply answers before 
questions have been raised within the learner's 
mind. Professor Meiklejohn contended " that the 
permanent and universal condition of all method 
in education is that it be heuristic." ^ In every 
subject the student must do his own mental walk- 
ing. The teacher may pick him up when he 
stumbles, and when he is lost should show him 
the way, but must not carry him. The method 
assumes that the student can think. Every kinder- 
gartner knows that this is true even of the smaller 
learners. It strives to put each student upon his 
own feet and to keep him from leaning unduly 
upon his fellows. Each individual must develop 
his own understanding. 

The genetic method. The genetic method differs 
from the heuristic method in the respect that the 
subject is developed by the class under the guid- 
ance of the teacher. The questions are directed 
to the class as a whole. Each one makes an effort 
to answer them or asks such questions as arise 
in him. The teacher is a chairman presiding over 
a discussion. The textbook serves as an outline 
of topics to be considered. Every lesson is opened 
by a discussion in the class, is then studied in 

1 See Armstrong, The Teaching of Scientific Method, p. 237. London, 
1910. 

[230] 



THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 

the textbook and in as many other books as 
are available, and then rediscussed in the class. 
Individual work, recitations, examinations, and lec- 
tures all have a place in this scheme of teaching, 
but the class discussion is the main thing. It 
converts the recitation period into a thinking 
period, in which each student does his best 
studying under the stimulus of his fellows and 
of the teacher. In certain subjects, say mathe- 
matics, physics, laboratory chemistry, and com- 
position, in which the work that each one should 
perform for himself can be clearly indicated, the 
heuristic method would seem to be best, but in 
other subjects, like literature, languages, history, 
and philosophy, where the give and take from 
the teacher and from one's fellow students is 
perhaps of greater value, the genetic method is 
more serviceable. Learners cannot, to be sure, 
find out everything for themselves, but they can 
at any rate employ the methods of fact finding 
and the methods by which facts are classified 
and conclusions from them deduced and tried out. 
These methods of teaching have been sufficiently 
tested to warrant the conclusion that the learner 
learns by them, that his interest grows instead 
of dwindling under them, that those schools are 
good schools which are talking schools, and those 
are poorer than they should be in which the 

[231] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

students merely attempt to imbibe knowledge. The 
school must become a workshop in which students 
work at definite tasks, and by their own efforts 
under the master's eye learn to use the great tools 
with which the race has by the same process 
learned to do its work. To give a child a con- 
ception instead of inducing him to find it seemed 
to the saintly Pestalozzi to be a wicked act. It 
robs the child of opportunity. Does it not rob 
society as well ? 



[232] 



CHAPTER VIII 

LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

Docs 7ncre observing teach us ? How many years 
of sitting beside a chauffeur and watching him 
guide the machine must one put in before he can 
learn how to drive himself, if he never takes the 
wheel? How many years of careful observation 
of the work of a carpenter will teach the trade, 
provided one does not take the tools into his own 
hands? In cities, wherever men are engaged in 
difficult work which can be seen from the streets, 
a crowd gathers to watch them. Do the persons 
in these crowds learn to perform the work which 
they observe so intently? How long would one 
have to watch a company of experts play tennis 
or baseball in order to become a qualified player 
himself? The answer to all of these questions is 
that no amount of watching of itself will enable 
one to do any of these things. One may grow 
gray as a baseball fan without learning how 
to catch or throw a ball ; and one may ride 
beside a skillful chauffeur all his days without 
acquiring any skill in driving the machine. Mere 
looking and listening will not teach. To learn to 

[233] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

drive, one must take the wheel ; to learn to ham- 
mer, one must hammer; and to learn to work 
with concepts, one must work with concepts. So 
marvelously does action sharpen our looking and 
listening that the mere beginnings of doing, on 
our own part, convert our seeings and hearings 
into values. The person who has tried to drive 
the machine learns something by watching the 
expert. The embryo baseball player profits • by 
watching the game. I watch men skate and see 
every movement they make, but the instant I 
myself put on the skates, I begin to see that 
there is much more to skating than my observation 
had told me. Indeed, even the prospect of taking 
the wheel as soon as we come to an easy piece 
of road converts my desultory attention into the 
closest interest, and I now become all eyes and 
ears for what is being done. 

We are motor-ideo beings. The new school of 
psychologists contends that, since behavior is the 
characteristic of living things, the only way to 
study consciousness is by studying behavior. Con- 
sciousness is motor — every sensory state tends to 
become an appropriate muscular movement. Ideas 
produce action. We are ideo-motor beings. The 
inverse has been neglected, but it is equally true. 
We are motor-ideo beings. Action produces ideas. 
It is the striving to attain an end which develops 

[234] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

knowledge. Consciousness is conative. Mind is 
a problem solver. It is perplexity, doubt, conflict, 
and not the even tenor of an untroubled mind 
which causes reflection. Where there is no ques- 
tion, there can be no searching for an answer. 
Where there is no problem, there is no occasion 
for the mind to converse with " herself." Seeings, 
hearings, feelings, thinkings, and doings follow 
each other at random. We are not concerned 
about anything in particular, our minds go wool- 
gathering, we daydream. A purpose to be served, 
an undertaking to be accomplished, keeps the 
flow of ideas within bounds. What I read or 
heard or saw but a moment ago, while purpose- 
lessly daydreaming, flitted by in a mist, but now^ 
parts of what I read, see, or hear, which are 
congruent with my purpose, bite themselves into 
my awareness. Now I learn, for I hunt, I select, 
I reject, I scheme, plan, fit, and am satisfied or 
dissatisfied with my own state of mind. To be 
active minded is to be acting — not taking things 
as they come, but making them come our way. But 
this is no hit-or-miss affair. We cannot think by 
commanding ourselves to think, neither can we 
feel by telling ourselves that the occasion calls 
for feeling. There are certain preliminaries which 
must be attended to before one can command 
his own mind. Learning to use one's own mind, 

[235] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

however, in such ways that he will go on using 
it to advantage as long as he lives is the one, great, 
supreme object of education. Now that psychology 
has defined itself as the study of behavior, education 
must follow suit by conceiving its mission as that 
of training the student to profitable behavior — 
that is, to do the things that the situations which 
he will meet in life call for. Our contention is 
that these social doings are definite responses to 
concrete situations, and that the learning which 
will fit us to make them must be the learning 
of definite doings, not that vague thing which is 
called general training. One definite reaction which 
all must learn is how to set about learning any- 
thing. What are the outlines of that process? 

What the psychology of atte7ition tells us as to 
how to go to work. If one would thread a needle, 
there is one spot where he should keep his eye. 
If one is shooting at a mark, it will not do to let 
his eyes wander up and down, looking now upon 
the muzzle of the gun, now upon the trigger. If 
one is trying to drive a nail, he should not fix his 
gaze upon his fingers which hold the nail, nor yet 
upon the hammer. Golf players who give raw 
beginners their preliminary lessons insist that they 
should fix their eyes upon a certain object. Ball 
players are told to keep their eyes not upon the 
bat, but on the ball. Boxers are taught to watch 

[236] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

the eyes of their antagonist. The strange thing 
about all this is that, if one will only keep his 
eyes fastened to the right spot, his muscles will 
do about what is required of them, whereas no 
amount of urging will make them respond in 
other than a fumbling way unless he does keep 
his eyes upon the proper object. 

Why is this? Why cannot one thread a needle 
just as well by keeping his eyes fixed upon the 
point of the needle as upon its eye, or drive a 
nail just as well by looking at the head of the 
hammer as by looking at the head of the nail ? 
The thread must be put through the eye of the 
needle. It must be the focus of attention in order 
that the coordinations may be directed to it. Of 
themselves they center upon it just so long as 
it is specially sensed. As soon as we begin to 
examine the sharpness of its point, its weight, its 
length, or other sensation aspects of it, our muscu- 
lar system shapes itself to these ends. Everyone 
has had the experience of thinking ahead of the 
word he was writing to the word he meant to write 
next, and finding that his pen had written the word 
which he was thinking about, not the word which 
he had set it to write. If the sensation is clear 
enough the motor activity comes of itself. In 
learning to ride a bicycle or to drive an auto- 
mobile, the beginner sees an object which he must 

[237] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

steer away from, and the next instant finds that he 
has steered right up to it. The sensory content 
sets off the motor response. To steer in the right 
way, one must keep his eye upon the course which 
he should follow, not upon the one which he must 
not take. This is as true in morals as it is in driv- 
ing a machine. And in acquiring all forms of skill 
the proper focusing of attention, or looking where 
one should look, would seem to be much more 
than half the battle. Training to do anything, 
then, would seem to be largely a matter of learn- 
ing to keep one's eye to the right spot and to let 
one's doings shape themselves accordingly. It is 
the business of sensory experience to define the 
problem, set the task, or locate the end. Motor 
responses immediately fall upon it, and in so far 
as habitual doings can handle it, it is already 
solved. If they fail to respond in the proper degree, 
their failure must be looked at and a try-try-again 
process must ensue, each new effort providing a 
new object to be looked at before a new and 
better doing is attempted. Thus even try-try-again 
learning is a process of redefining what must be 
done, and not making the first response over and 
over again blindly. 

Where mtcst one keep his eye in studying? If one 
cannot learn to shoot at a mark, or to thread a 
needle, or to bat a ball, without learning to keep 

[238] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

his eye on the right spot, is it Hkely that he can 
learn to read or to write, to think geometry or 
logic, to use scientific method, or to make history 
or literature function in the life which he leads, 
without learning what to look for before his nerv- 
ous system can make the responses which he wants 
it to make ? Studying is conscious learning. Con- 
sciousness is conative. It exists to define problems 
for organic responses to close in upon and solve. 
When the problem is sufficiently defined, the solu- 
tion seems to come of itself. I desire to learn to 
shoot at a mark so as to hit the bull's-eye. There 
is nothing w^hich I can do but to keep redefining 
my aim. My nervous system will have to catch the 
knack of responding better and better for itself. 
I can only see what is wanted and trust it to 
comply. Everyone who has practiced a long time 
at anything, knows how mysteriously the skill 
finally comes. More and more clearly he sees what 
must be done, but somehow the muscles refuse 
to do it. Yet let him but keep on asking and re- 
asking them to make the response w^iich he seeks, 
and one day, all of a sudden, they will supply it, 
if it is in their power. " It 's dogged that does it," 
said Darwin. The mathematician who carries his 
problem about with him month after month, per- 
haps even year after year, at last sees the solution 
staring him in the face. He does not know just 

[239] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

how it came, but because he had the problem and 
kept the problem, it came. " Seek and ye shall 
find " is the law. But how can skill in shooting 
come to those who do not aim at the bull's-eye, but 
are content to discharge the gun only in its general 
direction? Is there any profit at all in cultivating 
that kind of marksmanship? It may serve a casual 
interest to know in a general way how the thing 
is done, should one ever want to do it, and what 
degree of skill others have attained in it, but 
that sort of knowledge seems so trifling and 
dehumanizing that one longs once more to hear 
the Spartan cry, " Strip or leave the gymnasium." 

Setting the learner on the track of inve7itio7i. 
" I am convinced that the method of teaching 
which approaches most nearly to the methods 
of investigation is incomparably the best " ; wrote 
Edmund Burke, " since not content with serving 
up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the 
stock on which they grew; it tends to set the 
learner himself on the track of invention, and to 
direct him into those paths in which the author 
has made his own discoveries."^ 

Let us go then to the inventors, and ask them 
how they found out what they did not know before, 
in order that we may learn the process of discov- 
ery from them. First we must note that even the 

1 Quoted in Armstrong, The Teaching of Scientific Method, p. 237, 
[240] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

greatest of them did not create something out of 
nothing. "Imagination is constructive, not creative." 
John Ruskin points out that man with all his 
genius has not succeeded in creating a new kind 
of animal. In his most unhampered dreaming he 
has simply rearranged in new ways the parts of 
the animals which he found here. Every inven- 
tion is that sort of a variation of what has been 
experienced. But how did men come to vary their 
experiences in novel and highly beneficial ways ? 
Did they accidentally stumble upon these vari- 
ations? Did the images and thoughts with which 
their minds were filled by chance coagulate into 
new forms, so that mind, by a sort of spontaneous 
generation, developed new and profitable ideas? 
It is not in that way that men have made inven- 
tions. Casual interest, reverie, and daydreaming 
do not produce discoveries. If they did, indif- 
ference w^ould not save them. There is, to be 
sure, an element of accident in all invention, but 
the invention itself is not a lucky accident. We 
undertake something. That undertaking calls up 
remembered images, free images, and thoughts in 
new relations. Our effort sharpens attention. We 
are searching for means to ends. Our trying makes 
the parts of experience fall into new combinations. 
An unexpectedly apt variation tumbles out before 
us. We did not know what it might be before it 

[241] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

disclosed itself. It presented itself accidentally, but 
we were hunting for something along that line. 
Newton's description of his own method was that 
he pondered again and again on a question. " The 
combinatory law of the images " is not under con- 
trol. Purpose brings hosts of them under the eye 
of attention. One after the other they are dismissed 
as unsatisfactory. " Suddenly that particular form 
arises to the light which harmonizes perfectly with 
the ruling idea, mood or design." ^ Was its coming, 
then, due to chance or to the insistence of the 
ruling idea, mood, or design ? " The same relation 
that a word solving a riddle bears to that riddle 
is born by the modern conception of light to the 
facts discovered by Grimaldi, Romer, Huygens, 
Newton, Malus, and Fresnel, and only by the help 
of this slowly developed conception is our mental 
vision enabled to embrace the broad domain of 
facts in question."^ 

How inventions are made. Uniquely pernicious 
is the popular theory as to how inventions are 
made, for it does irreparable damage to the minds 
of the young. A myth tells us that the moving 
teakettle lid directed James Watt to his valuable 
discovery. But note the genealogy of that inven- 
tion. Hero of Alexandria, about 130 B.C., described 

1 Mach, Scientific Lectures, p. 279. Chicago, 1898. 

2 Ibid. p. 278. 

[242] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

a device by which the air in a hollow altar, when 
heated by a fire upon it, drove water from a ves- 
sel below it into a suspended bucket, causing it 
to descend and open the attached temple doors. 
Gerbert of Aurillac (d. 1002) and Leonardo da 
Vinci both seem to have tried to make steam do 
mechanical work. Delia Porta in 1601 anticipated 
the steam engine which Savery a century later 
made. In 1663 the Marquis of Worcester proposed, 
if he did not indeed make, the first useful steam 
engine. In 1698 Savery obtained a patent for a 
water-raising engine. In 1705 Newcomen made 
the piston engine a success. In 1763 James Watt, 
" an instrument maker in Glasgow, while engaged 
by the university in repairing a model of New- 
comen's engine, was struck by the waste of steam 
to which the alternate chilling and heating of the 
cylinder gave rise. He saw that the remedy, in his 
own words, would lie in keeping the cylinder as hot 
as the steam which entered it. With this view he 
added to the engine a new organ — an empty vessel 
separate from the cylinder, into which the steam 
should be allowed to escape from the cylinder to be 
condensed there by the application of cold water 
either outside or as a jet."^ Working to this end 
Watt perfected his patent in 1769. He then pro- 
ceeded to work out further improvements. 

1 Encyclopedia Britannica, article, " Steam Engine." 
[243] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

How docs a scientist work ? These men, one after 
the other, were seeking the right word to solve a 
riddle ; that is, they were trying to solve a problem 
which had been handed on to them by men who 
went before them. Their efforts were not purpose- 
less; they were directed to an end. But how does 
a scientist work ? How did Charles Darwin set 
about making his marvelous discovery? As natu- 
ralist, he accompanied the Beagle on its famous 
voyage from 183 1 to 1836. " I have always felt that 
I owe to the voyage the first real training or educa- 
tion of my mind," ^ he wrote, referring to the riddles 
he had to solve in puzzling out the geological struc- 
ture of new and unknown districts. After returning 
home, in 1837, he wrote: "In July opened first 
note-book on Transmutation of Species. Had been 
greatly struck from about the month of previous 
March on character of South American fossils and 
species on Galapagos Archipelago. These facts 
(especially latter) origin of all my views." ^ In his 
" Autobiography " and his " Naturalists' Voyage 
around the World " he explains the mental per- 
plexity, which was the origin of all his views, in this 
fashion : " During the voyage of the Beagle I had 
been deeply impressed by discovering in the Pam- 
pean formations great fossil animals covered with 

1 Life and Letters, p. 6i. 

2 Poulton, Charles Darwin, p. 26. New York, 1896. 

[244] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

armour, like that on existing armadillos. . . ." " This 
wonderful relationship in the same continent be- 
tween the dead and the living, will, I do not doubt, 
hereafter throw more light on the appearance of or- 
ganic beings on our earth and their disappearance 
from it, than any other class of facts." 

Now he had his problem. The next step was 
to find a theory for its solution. In a letter to 
his cousin in June, 1838, he writes, "It is my 
prime hobby, and I really think some day I shall 
be able to do something in that most intricate 
subject — species and varieties." He gathers facts 
— " all kinds of facts " — about species and varie- 
ties. In October, 1838, he read " Malthus on Popu- 
lation." " Being well prepared to appreciate the 
struggle for existence which everywhere goes on 
from long continued observation of the habits of 
animals and plants, it at once struck me that under 
these circumstances favorable variations would tend 
to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be de- 
stroyed. The result of this would be the forma- 
tion of new species. Here then I had a theory 
by which to work." 

The hypothesis is only the redefining of the 
problem. First, one must examine the facts that 
seem to bear upon the problem he started with. 
That examination tells us that some of these facts 
bear upon it more intimately than others, and that 

[245] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

its answer seems to lie in their particular direc- 
tion. They must be interrogated specifically. The 
hypothesis is the question, or rather the series of 
questions, which we must put to them. Darwin 
now had his hypothesis, or theory, by which to 
work. Then came the years of patient collection 
of facts in the trying out, both negatively and 
positively, of the conclusions deduced from the 
hypothesis. At last the theory seemed to its author 
to be proved, but he could not trust his own judg- 
ment. He must now formulate and publish it, for 
publishing it or submitting it to the judgment of 
his fellow workers in the same field is as impor- 
tant as any of the steps of scientific method, since, 
as Professor Minot has said, " Science consists in 
the discoveries made by individuals, afterwards 
confirmed and correlated by others, so that they 
lose their personal character."^ 

All are agreed that Darwin possessed that pre- 
cious human quality which we call " an open mind." 
But did he simply open his mind and let Nature 
write her truth upon it ? Would it not be much 
more correct to say that Darwin had a vastly 
better quality, namely, an inquiring mind, or a 
mind that worked? He himself said, "It's dogged 
that does it," but would " dogged " have done it 

1 See Royce, The Problem of Christianity, Vol. II, p. 225. New York, 
[246] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

without a question? In other words, is it not the 
systematic way in which he worked, rather than his 
persistence, which brought the great result? 

Discoveries are not made by tJie aimless accumu- 
lation of facts. It is popularly supposed that dis- 
coveries are made in another fashion, and that 
this is neither the way that the great masters 
work nor the way that the apprentices should take 
in their preparation. It is Francis Bacon who is 
chiefly responsible for misleading mankind in re- 
gard to this very important matter. Repelled by 
the scholastic logic, he described the process of 
discovery as consisting first in the accumulating 
of facts, and subsequently abstracting their identi- 
ties and differences, and so deriving laws or general 
principles from them. " The value of this method," 
writes Professor Jevons, " might be estimated his- 
torically by the fact that it has not been followed 
by any of the great masters of science." ^ Not the 
blind accumulation of facts but the putting of ques- 
tions to nature is the essence of scientific method. 
The discoverer is the man who is perplexed, who 
has a problem which has set him to guessing how 
it may be solved. The problem must be his prob- 
lem, not a merely abstract one. When it is his 
problem, it keeps turning itself over in his mind, 
until he finally hits upon some notion as to how to 

^ Jevons, Principles of Science, Vol. II, p. 134. London, 1874. 

[247] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

solve It. Now It has reached the hypothesis stage, 
it has redefined Itself and become a manageably 
concrete question. This hypothesis may not work. 
Then he must discard it and find a better one. " I 
liave steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so 
as to give up any hypothesis however much beloved 
(and I cannot resist forming one on every subject) 
as soon as facts are opposed to it," wrote Darwin. 
Wherein is the process of finding things out the 
first time different from the process of finding them 
out the secoiid ti7ne? The state of mind which 
makes discoveries, then, is that which asks ques- 
tions, which has theories, which anticipates. Learn- 
ing is not the accumulation of facts, but the 
purposeful accumulation of facts. Mind is primarily 
not analytical, but constructive. Analysis or defini- 
tion is for synthesis and cannot profitably go on 
by itself. It Is motive, purpose, and plan which 
build the work of the great scientist, as they do 
the work of the great artist. Liebig, Indeed, 
declared that there w^as no essential difference 
between them. Not blind labor but working by 
a plan gains the end. Now wherein is the process 
of finding things out the first time different from 
the process of finding them out the second time ? 
Human discoveries have not, as a rule, been made 
by chance ; they have been made by the minds 
which set problems before themselves and labored 

[248] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

persistently to solve them. It was not by accumu- 
lating facts blindly that the steam engine was 
invented. Is it possible for the student to redis- 
cover it simply by accumulating facts about it.f* 
Must he not put himself somewhat in the posi- 
tion of the inventor, ask himself similar questions, 
supply himself, at least in thought, with similar 
materials, and construct a result ? 

Must not the stude7it prefer the search for truth 
to truth bestowed? The story is told of one of the 
early philosophers that when a student at one of 
the great philosophical schools of Athens he 
asked his teacher to direct him to the problems, 
saying that he preferred to find the solution for 
them himself. He was a young Greek Lessing, 
who preferred to search for truth to having truth 
bestowed. Were not he and Lessing right ? Has 
the student, indeed, any choice in the matter .^^ 
Must he not insist upon undertaking the search 
for truth for himself, if he is ever to get it? 
Neither an intellectual, a moral, nor an aesthetic 
character can be formed otherwise than by a man 
persistently presenting to himself the objects which 
belong to it as his good. Passive observation will 
not make them his. Nature provides him with 
instructive curiosity and personal needs. Out of 
that each man must create his own entire body 
of comprehension and appreciation. 

[249] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

That process should be a systematic one. Merely 
to tell a person what pictures are good will not 
make him appreciate them. Neither will telling 
him why they are good. He must first want to 
know^ and himself ponder about them. The reason 
why the didactic teaching of morals fails, and the 
didactic teaching of science, history, literature, or 
any other subject, is because it tries to impart 
results instead of striving to direct processes. 

What is the value of answers zuhich have not 
been preceded by qtiestions? Mind works by focal- 
ization. Attention is a name for the fact that 
experience has a center and a margin. Whatever 
occupies the center is the object of acutest 
awareness. Marginal matters shade off into ob- 
scurity. Self-protection keeps my affairs, my un- 
dertakings, my interests in the center. The rest 
are negligible, these must ever have the right of 
way. If I ask a question and you give an answer, 
I seize upon your answer and try to interpret it in 
terms of my scheme of meanings. I make it mine. 
But textbooks and teachers are by no means so 
thoughtful. They do not wait for us to ask ques- 
tions — they at once begin to supply answ^ers and 
are not usually polite enough to ask preliminary 
questions in order to enlist our interest in what 
they are trying to answer. If attention were differ- 
ent from what it is, if everything that passed before 

[250] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

the mind produced a uniformly vivid impression, if 
there were no picking out or focaHzing whatever, 
instruction which supphed answers without ques- 
tions would perhaps be as good as any other kind. 
Then Bacon's notion of discovery would be correct. 
Learning of all sorts would be just the accumula- 
tion of facts, for the function of mind would be to 
mirror nature. 

But attention does not work that way. Potential 
answers to questions may be all about us, but until 
we ask the questions they will not reveal them- 
selves. We cannot expect to find without seeking, 
nor to arrive at a destination without first taking 
precaution to set out for it. The chief difference 
between the great discoverers and lesser men 
seems to be that the discoverers learned how to 
put their minds to work, while the others did not. 
It is the business of education to teach that lesson. 
It must shift its attention from things to be known 
and minds which know them to the relations which 
are to be set up between the experiencing subject 
and the experienced objects. 

If mind is a problem solver what must teachers 
do? If mind is a problem solver and works by 
focalization of attention, what does this principle 
require of teachers ? Not to teach blindly, and not 
to allow their children to study blindly. " Children 
fear the dark," says Herbart, and by that he means 

[251] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

that they shrink and withdraw from that which 
they cannot comprehend and lay hold of. They are 
naturally eager to learn, but obscurity repels them. 
They are naturally active, but they cannot act in a 
given way without some anticipation of what they 
are to do. Professor Dewey has suggested that per- 
haps in no other way could so great an improve- 
ment be brought about in education as by teachers 
with one accord seeing to it that children should 
never set about studying any lesson without first 
having a clear notion as to just what it is that they 
are undertaking to learn, and what they are to 
do in order to learn it. Each single lesson upon 
a given subject is an organic member of a series. 
The purposes of the separate lessons must interact 
to form one scheme of purpose. The teacher who 
directs the students to the comprehension of the 
parts must comprehend the purpose of the whole. 
As a precondition to the reform which Professor 
Dewey suggests, another reform is necessary. The 
teacher must know the purpose of each study which 
he teaches, in order to know how to shape instruc- 
tion to attain the desired result. Unless education 
is an irrational proceeding, there must be such a 
purpose behind the teaching of each subject. The 
teacher is there to guide the student to socially 
profitable experiences which will come to him if 
he will consider this particular body of problems in 

[252] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

the light of certain suggestions as to methods of 
handhng them. He cannot act as a guide unless 
he knows what it is most profitable for us to see. 
He must plan the journey before we set out. Is it 
suflficient if he alone plan the journey? 

M2ist not the student have a general aim in pur- 
suing each study ? Should not the student from the 
outset know w^iere he is going, or should he be led 
by faith ? It is customary to say that he is too im- 
mature to comprehend the purposes which the dif- 
ferent studies serve. He must take them on trust. 

His not to reason why, 
His but to do and die. 

To be sure, he has his questions about their value, 
and since he is to work at them for some time, he 
would like to know^ before he begins w^hat they are 
for and what the outcome is to be. Those who 
think it unwise to encourage the doubts of youth 
would suppress all this and demand unquestioning 
acceptance which, by a curious metastasis, they call 
docility. Ought w^e not to proceed in just the oppo- 
site way.f* Must not the student know what he is 
to aim at in order to learn to shoot .^ The more 
definite and purposeful his undertaking can be from 
the beginning, the greater the energy which it will 
call forth from him. If his mind is to attend school 
as well as his body, he must find his own purposes 

[253] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

there. To be sure, he cannot be made aware of the 
full meaning of the subject before he has studied it. 
No more can the traveler anticipate in detail what 
he will see in a strange country before he has set 
foot in it. Yet, unless he prepares his mind for his 
journey, the meaning of the objects which his guide 
bids him look at will escape him, and he will not 
even see what is there to be seen. The student 
must have a general aim if his work is not to be 
merely haphazard. He must face each study he 
takes up as an opportunity to perfect himself in 
the particular kind of skill which it represents. 
Without this general aim he may make the mis- 
take of trying to learn to skate by diligently w^atch- 
ing others skate and committing descriptions of 
how it is done, without once putting on the 
skates himself. 

And must not the stiident have also a specific aim 
to make possible the studying of each lesson ? Must 
he not also have a specific problem to solve in the 
learning of each lesson ? Theoretically each lesson 
has a reason of its own. It has been chosen to 
teach some particular part of the whole process 
which is to be mastered. To master this phase 
of the process, it is just as necessary to proceed by 
a plan as it is in striving to master the subject as 
a whole. The essence of scientific method, as we 
have seen, is the location of the problem. When 

[254] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

it has been found, mind has an end to which to 
work and can bring its resources to bear upon it. 
The clearer the anticipation of the end, the more 
definite the responses which it calls forth. "The 
nature of the mental life," says Professor Dewey, 
" may be illustrated as follows : Suppose an indi- 
vidual in a dark room, with which he is wholly 
unacquainted, and which is lighted up at brief in- 
tervals by an electric spark; at the first spark the 
individual will perceive next to nothing, and that 
little indistinctly. At the next spark he has, how- 
ever, this vague basis of expectation upon which 
to work, and the result is that he apperceives 
somewhat more. This apperception enables him 
to form a more perfect anticipation of what is com- 
ing, and thus enables him to adjust his mind more 
perfectly. This process of apperception through 
anticipation, and reaction of the apperceived con- 
tent upon the completeness of the anticipation, 
continues until during some flash he has a pretty 
definite and perfect idea of the scene before him, 
although the spark lasts no longer than the first, 
and there is no more material sensuously present. 
The sole difference is in the adjusting power of 
the mind, due to its ability to anticipate.-^ As a 
further illustration of the fact that attention faces 
the future and works best when preadjusted, he 

1 Dewey, Psychology, p. 139. New York, 1S96. 

[255] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

cites the fact that, though the average time which 
elapses before a sense stimulus, say of light, can 
be recognized as such is one eighth to one fifth 
of a second, that if a signal is given before the 
coming of the sense stimulus, so that the mind 
can prepare itself, the time may be reduced to one 
thirteenth of a second. 

Working by the problem is employing tJie psy- 
chology of attention. Working by the problem is 
nothing more than employing the psychology of 
attention. But who must have the problem? It is 
not enough that the teacher have it and work by it. 
Each student must have it also. The teacher can- 
not supply it to them. He can only arouse it within 
them — it must come out of their past experience. 
When the teacher states his problem the most that 
his words can do is to make the learner conscious 
of a problem already latent in his own mind. 
It may not be the same as the teacher's. It may, 
indeed, be of slight worth ; but the ability to find 
out what it is, to postpone one's own problem, and 
to assist the person whose question it is to find 
a satisfactory answer for it, is that which makes 
teaching a fine art. 

According to this view the preparation for the 
study of the lesson is more important than any 
other phase of study. Every prospective lesson 
should be resolved into its definite problems before 

[256] 



LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 

anything else is attempted. It is only by acquiring 
a conscious method of attacking our work that we 
may really be said to learn anything. The method 
is applicable to every study and to every lesson. 
It involves nothing more nor less than for each 
student to get into the way of asking himself 
before he attempts to do anything further, " Now 
just what is it that I am trying to do ? " 

" The use of the problem as the form of edu- 
cating the reason," says Professor Henderson, ". . . 
may be said to be the largest outcome of educa- 
tional reform in the direction of method." ^ There 
remains much to be done to bring this new-old 
method into general use. Not the least of the 
changes it involves concern the textbooks. Most 
of them have a list of questions at the end of each 
chapter. The student comes upon them after he 
has diligently tried to learn the answers of the 
text, without having had the attention-fixing, force- 
gathering questions to help him. Should they not 
come at the beginning, rather than at the end, 
of the chapter ? 

1 Henderson, Principles of Education, p. 273. New York, 1910. 



257] 



CHAPTER IX 

ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

The part that the students take in the work of the 
classroom diminishes progressively as they advance. 
Why is this? A person who goes from a kinder- 
garten or a primary classroom to the exercises of 
an eighth grade, a high school, or a college class 
is pretty certain to note that little children take a 
much more active part in the work of learning than 
do the youths and maidens of the advanced classes. 
The little fellows are full of questions, which 
neither time nor place can keep them from asking. 
The older ones can hardly be prevailed upon to ask 
a question or to express a doubt as to the suffi- 
ciency of that which they read or of what has been 
told them. The disease is progressive. The most 
unresponsive of all grades of students are college 
students. To get them to speak out their minds 
freely upon the subject under discussion is nearly 
impossible. They prefer to sit clamlike and non- 
committal, to receive and not to give. Yet every 
one of them, when he first came to school, w^as as 
eagerly expressive as the children of the kinder- 
garten now are. Something has happened to them 

[258] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

as they journeyed from the first grade to the last 
which has made them spectators and not participants 
in the game of knowledge. Neither mental habits 
nor life interests can be successfully cultivated in this 
passive way. If it is what one does that teaches 
him, not what one hears, one question raised by 
a student is more effective than a dozen unasked 
ones answered by the teacher or the textbook. 

Alaki: your schools talking schools. There is no 
way to make the problem a common possession 
save by making the school a talking school. As 
soon as one can be brought to say something upon 
the subject under discussion, he has committed 
himself to think about it further. He has defined 
his own views and become responsible for them 
to his group. Now he must either support them 
or renounce them. We may be quite sure that the 
exercise w^hich he performs just because it is set, 
without seeing any meaning in it or looking ahead 
to solve any problem of his own through it, is just 
" busy work " to him, no matter how old he may be. 
Merely to be engaged upon a subject matter which, 
when properly handled, has value is no guaranty 
that its value is being gotten. Unless the student 
is searching, we may be sure he is not finding, and 
what he does when he is not searching, but should 
be, is deintellectualizing to him. So important, 
then, is the problem as a means of teaching that it 

[259] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

is not easy to make it too prominent. In short it is 
the problem, and not the answer, for which the 
teacher is chiefly responsible. Somewhere in his 
" Autobiography " Herbert Spencer recognizes this 
by making the sage remark that a good teacher will 
constantly be raising questions which he will not 
attempt to answer, but will leave his students to 
puzzle out entirely for themselves. Such questions 
as, Does dew fall or rise? What is the difference 
between walking and running? How does the sap 
pass from the roots to the branches of a tree ? 
Wherein was Abraham Lincoln a great man ? What 
is the spirit of our country? W^hat did St. Paul 
mean when he said " I am a Roman citizen"? Is it 
true that the most tragic utterance in Shakespeare 
is "Othello's occupation 's gone " ? Why did Socrates 
insist that he knew nothing ? 

But the use of the conversation method in teach- 
ing has other very great advantages in addition to 
allowing learning to proceed as problem getting. 
It permits the student to comprehend the meaning 
of his own activity from the first and to employ 
intelligently the methods of discovery and classi- 
fication. Where it is thoroughgoingly followed, it 
banishes didacticism altogether. 

Education as the learning of definitions. The doc- 
trine of real predicates. Nothing is more astonish- 
ing, when we look at it critically, than the curious 

[260] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

kind of thing which has at times passed for knowl- 
edge and been retailed as such in the schools. The 
part which the learning of definitions has played 
and still plays is so great that many teachers seem 
to hold the view that truth resides in definitions. 
This doctrine goes back to Aristotle's notion that 
theoretical knowledge is the contemplation of truth 
independent of volition. To know anything we 
must know what it is, not what it does. There are 
fixed divisions in nature. When we define anything 
we do not state our own purposes with regard to it. 
We tell what it is\ we state its essence. When 
asked, " What is Socrates ? " we may not say that 
he is a philosopher, or a marble cutter, or the great- 
est of the Greeks ; we must reply, "He is a man," 
for that is the real predicate to which he belongs. 
As long as one holds to this theory of real predi- 
cates, to know anything is to know to what natural 
kind it belongs and how it differs from other 
groups or species wdiich belong to that kind or 
genus. Learning, then, consists in acquiring the 
definitions of things, for the definition explains and 
unfolds the nature of the thing which it defines. 

But take anything — this sheet of paper, for 
example. What is it? It is something to w^rite 
upon, a thing to read from, kindling to start the 
fire with, material to make car w^heels out of, stuff 
to make into pulp from which to manufacture other 

[261] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

kinds of paper, etc., etc. Is it light or heavy, hard 
or soft, destructible or indestructible ? That de- 
pends on what you compare it with. He who 
would define paper as it is in itself will have a hard 
task. Which one of the relations into which it 
enters is the real paper ? As an existing thing it is 
lighter or heavier, larger or smaller, to the right or 
to the left of everything else in existence. To ex- 
plain its total significance is impossible. And no 
one proposition which we can frame in regard to it 
states its nature any more truly than do a number 
of other assertions which can equally well be made 
about it. In short, it has as many definitions as it 
has properties, and no one of them is to be pre- 
ferred to another save as it ministers to purpose 
and leads to valuable results. That is, the business 
of definition and of classification is not to explain 
the nature of things, but to set forth their uses. 

As long as the doctrine of 7ral predicates 
obtained, strange services were performed in the 
name of education. Men forgot the form which 
Aristotle had taught them to follow, but they clung 
religiously to the notion that truth could be taught 
only in definitions. Instruction became a very revel 
of definition-presenting on the part of teachers and 
definition-acquiring on the part of students. Alcuin, 
the Saxon teacher, at the court of Charles the 
Great, does not know his Aristotle well enough to 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

define by genus and species, but he has inherited 
the scholastic tradition that trutli must be pre- 
sented in the form of definitions, so he goes about 
it thus, in one of the dialogues which he wrote for 
the instruction of young people : 

Pepin. What is water ? 

Albinus. a supporter of life ; a cleanser of filth. 

Pepin. What is fire ? 

Albinus. Excessive heat; the nurse of growing things; the 
ripener of crops. 

Pepin. What is cold ? 

Albinus. The febricity of our members. 

Pepin. What is frost ? 

Albinus. The persecutor of plants ; the destruction of leaves ; 
the bond of the earth ; the source of waters. 

Pepin. What is snow ? 

Albinus. Dry water. 

Pepin. What is the winter ? 

Albinus. The exile of summer. 

Pepin. What is the spring ? 

Albinus. The painter of the earth. 

Pepin. What is the autumn ? 

Albinus. The barn of the year. 

The scholasticism of later centuries was so 
thoroughly convinced as to the finality of Aris- 
totle's doctrine of ultimate differences in nature 
that it set up an elaborate theory of substantial 
forms or entities by which to distinguish things. 
'' Fire differs from water," they said, " not only 
through the position of its parts but through an 

[263] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

entity which belongs to it, quite distinct from the 
materials. When a body changes its condition 
there is no change in the parts, but one form is 
supplanted by another." The relations into which 
things enter and the qualities which they disclose 
in those relations are their accidents, which are 
quite different from the bodies to which they 
attach. To know things now meant to know their 
substantial forms. The revel of distinguishing, de- 
fining, and classifying, unhindered by considera- 
tions of the relations of things, speeded up to a 
furious rate. To define anything meant to state its 
essence, not its action. Opium produces sleep be- 
cause it has a virtus dormativa. " The substantial 
form of fire," said Toletus, " is an active principle 
by which fire with heat for an instrument produces 
fire." ^ It does not seem possible for a student 
to increase his knowledge by acquiring definitions 
such as these. 

The doctrine of real predicates to-day. But how 
do matters stand at present? Is knowledge-getting 
still conceived to be the learning of definitions ? 
Professor Mann in his valuable book " The Teach- 
ing of Physics " offers the following as illustrations 
of the method employed to introduce the student to 
that subject in a text published in 1902: 

1 Janet, Introduction to Leibniz' Discourse on Metaphysics. Chicago, 
1902. 

[ 264 ] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

Physics. Physics is the science which treats of the changes 
which take place in the physical universe. 

The Physical Universe. The physical universe is that part of 
the universe which is, so far as we know, made up of the two 
fundamental existences, matter and energy. 

Matter. No complete definition of matter is possible. We may 
learn of the properties of material bodies, but the essential nature 
of matter is entirely unknown to us. The name is generally under- 
stood to mean the indestructible substance of all bodies which 
are appreciable by our senses. 

Energy. The essential nature of energy is likewise unknown. 
We can measure its quantity, but we know nothing of its descrip- 
tive qualities. It may be provisionally defined as the capacity for 
doing work. 

Work. The term work, as used in physics, may be defined as 
the producing of such changes in the relative positions or relative 
motions of material bodies as would require an effort on our part 
to produce. 

Now how much more does the student know 
after he has committed these definitions than he 
knew before ? Just as much as he can supply 
meanings for out of his own past experience. That 
is not much, for the list is formidable. This method 
of study does not articulate closely with life and 
does not contribute much which the student can 
use either mentally or physically. Yet everything 
which is talked about here is in some sense a 
matter of everyday experience which every reader 
of the text already knows something about. Is there 
any reason why learning more about these things 

[265] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

should be made so difficult, by abstract definitions, 
as to be nearly impossible? Is this cyclopedic sys- 
tem of definitions and theories the best approach 
to this or any other subject? Is there not a better 
way? Professor Mann thinks there is, and this is 
his illustration of it. 

A better way than that of learning definitions. 
Since mind is a problem solver, if we want it to go 
to work, we should start with a problem. Here are 
some which will set every mind to thinking: Is it 
more work to climb to the third floor up a verti- 
cal fire escape or to walk up stairs to the same 
height ? Why ? Does it require more work to slide 
a cake of ice up an inclined plane into an ice house 
than it does to lift it vertically to the same height ? 
Why? What do you call the lifting, pushing, and 
pulling which these jobs require? Can you give 
other examples of work? Work is a very familiar 
experience, and to extend its concept is not difficult. 
The great advantage of this method is that the stu- 
dent has the idea and does the thinking. To go up 
stairs is work ; to climb up the ladder or fire escape 
is work. WHiich requires the more work? Almost 
everyone is ready with an answer, but the immedi- 
ate answer will not do. For the surest mark of an 
unscientific mind, as Mrs. Boole has pointed out, 
is that it does not wait to find out what the truth 
of a situation which confronts it is, but judges 

[ 266 ] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

and classifies it right off ; while the possessing of a 
scientific mind is evidenced by the fact that we do 
not make our judgments instantly, but delay them 
until we can gather the evidences, apply tests, and 
study the matter out. It is the suspended judg- 
ment and not the judgment which drops instantly 
upon any subject which should come through train- 
ing, and here we have a splendid opportunity to 
present its claims as an ideal of scientific method. 
Does it require more work to slide ice up an inclined 
plane into an ice house or to lift it in ? How can 
we find out the facts and make sure about this? 
If one wanted to know the exact distance to the 
wall, he would measure it ; and if he wanted to 
know how much he could lift, he would have to 
weigh the load. Is it not possible to measure the 
work done when the ice is pulled into the ice 
house, and the work done when it is lifted in, and 
compare them ? To lift a brick one foot requires a 
certain amount of work, to lift it two feet twice 
as much, and to lift three bricks two feet requires 
six times as much. That is, if we multiply the 
weight by the distance, we shall find the amount 
of work which has been done in either case and 
can then compare them. 

But a block of ice and an inclined plane up which 
to slide it into an ice house are not easy to get for 
our experiment. We cannot wait until ice forms to 

[267] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

make it. We want to try out the facts now. How 
can we? It is for just such a case as this that men 
have devised laboratories. There is absolutely noth- 
ing magical about them — they are handy arrange- 
ments for helping one to find out what he wants to 
know, without waiting for conditions to be favorable 
outside. In the laboratory we can attach a spring 
balance to a rope and with it pull a block of wood 
to the top of an inclined plane, and the balance 
will weigh the pull of the block. Then we can 
measure the distance and multiply the weight by 
the distance. Then we can pull the same block up 
vertically, multiplying the weight by the distance as 
before, and compare the two products. The result 
is a surprise. What shall we say now about the 
relative work involved in going upstairs or climb- 
ing up a vertical ladder ? Have we found out any- 
thing about what a machine does ? 

Most of the steps of scientific method have been 
employed in solving this problem. They are very 
simple and very useful methods of going about our 
work. The student has learned a little about using 
them and has a much firmer grip upon the begin- 
nings of science than the repeating of a definition 
could possibly give him. Now he is in a position to 
make an attempt at framing his own notion of 
what work is. Definitions are necessary, but not all 
definitions. " What is a good definition ? " asks 

[268] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

Poincare. " For the philosopher or the scientist it 
is a definition which appHes to all the objects de- 
fined, and only those; it is one satisfying the rules 
of logic. But in teaching, it is not that ; a good 
definition is one understood by the scholars." ^ 
This understanding comes after certain preliminary 
steps. It must be led up to. It is not an original 
point of departure. 

SJiall the student's experience be tised in school? 
Each student brings his own experience to school. 
Shall it be used there, or shall an abstract body of 
definitions and textbook principles be made to take 
its place ? No matter what is done, we may be sure 
that it is the familiar experience that he will con- 
tinue to live by. Either the new learning which he 
is there to get must provide an occasion for the 
reorganization of his familiar experience and must 
be grasped by means of it, or it will hardly react or 
affect him at all. When the classroom is changed 
into a deliberative assembly for the systematic dis- 
cussion and testing of the problems which are the 
crux of all intellectual work, and the teacher pre- 
sides as the chairman of the discussion, the attitude 
of the students changes. They collect their own 
past experiences, they tell them, they draw conclu- 
sions from them and try them out, they reword the 
statements of the textbook, they supply illustrations 

1 Poincare, The Foundations of Science, p. 430. New York, 1913. 

[269] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

of its principles, they furnish percepts to fill its 
concepts, and they work out homely applications of 
its lessons and furnish its teaching with the signifi- 
cance of use. In all this, they disclose their own 
difficulties of comprehension and point their fellows 
and the teacher to furtlier problems for considera- 
tion, which but for their outspokenness would have 
been neglected. 

Hoiv shall the textbook be used? The textbook, as 
its name indicates, is a book of texts. Who shall 
interpret their meaning and make the necessary 
applications? The answer, I think, must be that 
the students must do it for themselves; the teacher 
cannot do it for them. If one attempts to absorb 
the textbook without interpreting its answers, with- 
out indeed first having the questions to which they 
are answers, without supplementing what it has to 
offer by what his own experience tells him upon 
the same subject, and without considering the sig- 
nificance of what he learns in terms of out-of-class 
doing, is he not subjecting himself to the letter 
which kills and missing the spirit which gives life ? 
" Who shall deliver me from the body of this 
death ? " asks St. Paul. And it seems that he 
meant this death in life which results from literal- 
ism. Is there any way for the student to escape it, 
save by relying upon the inward man in his learn- 
ing in the same way that St. Paul did .f* 

[270] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

The student must collect inaterials with which to 
solve his problems. There is one other emancipation 
which the student must actively claim. He must 
not only have his own problems and use his own 
experience in finding a solution for them. He must 
learn to consult the experience of other persons 
than the teacher and other books than the text- 
book. If his task is simply to learn set lessons, this 
need not be done, and he will not be taught the 
wider mastery of the tools of knowledge. Yet as 
there can hardly be two opinions about the fact that 
he is in school chiefly to learn how to learn, it follows 
that he must from the first to the last be taught to 
use the implements or means of knowledge, and 
among them books, not textbooks merely, and as- 
suredly not the one textbook with which he is pro- 
vided. If his lessons are learned only from that, a 
condition of mental bondage and paralysis of effort 
will result. The school library and its supplemen- 
tary books must be used. Even these are not 
enough. The student must form the habit of find- 
ing books for himself at home, in the public library, 
in other folks' bookcases, anywhere that they can 
be had, and gathering from them material which 
bears upon his problems in school. As soon as his 
learning is approached as a series of problems, his 
studying gets a new definition. It is now the hunt- 
ing down of subjects. Instead of a committer of a 

[271] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

few paragraphs or pages assigned as a lesson, he 
undertakes to hunt for all he can find on a given 
question. He thus becomes a searcher for knowl- 
edge ; and by having mental difficulties and defin- 
ing them as problems, by hunting for facts which 
are pertinent to them, by organizing these facts to- 
gether and finding out whether or no they will 
solve the difficulty, he learns to make his own 
knowledge — he learns how to learn. 

The st2ident mtist become an active selector of the 
i77ip or taut from the unimportant. There are certain 
corollaries to this demonstration. The first is that 
the student must become self-reliant. Passive study- 
ing will not make him so. Only by acting on his 
own initiative can he become a doer. Working by 
the problem puts him in a position in which he 
must consciously organize his knowledge by select- 
ing the important from the unimportant, and the 
true from the false. 

Take any lesson — twenty words to be spelled, 
a column of map questions to be answered, a dozen 
problems to be solved. Do all the words require 
the same amount of study ? Are the map questions 
of the same worth ? Are the arithmetic problems 
all equally important ? Take any paragraph or any 
page of a book. Is each of its sentences of the 
same value? Book study has a tendency to leave 
the conviction that they are. Teaching must 

[272] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

correct this error. The head of a large office of 
my acquaintance tells me that he employs as clerks 
a few graduates of colleges and a good many gradu- 
ates of high schools ; that almost without exception 
no one of them, when he comes from the school, can 
take a letter and summarize its contents in a sen- 
tence or two ; that the ability to seize the main 
point has not been developed in them. But the 
ability to take a part of the morning's mail and 
digest each letter in a sentence or two annotated in 
pencil upon it is the form of skill which he requires. 
Another employer of whom I know decfares that it 
is next to impossible to find a secretary who can 
take a sentence or two of direction and frame a 
letter to embody it. Yet precis-writmg and letter 
construction are not particularly difficult forms of 
skill, and they are kinds of ability which education 
of every grade should foster. The habit of finding 
the main point and distinguishing it from subordi- 
nate matter w^ill not come as a by-product of study. 
Yet every school exercise has a main point and 
calls for a fixation of attention upon it. The little 
child in the reading class who does not know what 
he is reading about, the high-school student who 
does not know why he is studying this particular 
lesson and w^hat he is to learn from it, and the col- 
lege student w^ho tries to put down in his notebook 
all that the lecturer says, can hardly be said to be 

[273] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

distinguishing values. They are being trained to be 
" thoughtless thinkers." Only by persistent effort 
to find the main point and stick to it can that 
wholesome tendency be established. This natural 
motive is seldom encouraged in textbooks. 

He must separate the trite from the false. The 
student must not only solve his own problems with 
the assistance of teachers and books, but in doing 
so he must learn that much that passes for knowl- 
edge is not knowledge, and that he is responsible 
for separating the true from the false. The road to 
knowledge *lies through doubt. The student must 
become a doubter in order to " prove all things ; 
hold fast that w^iich is good." Descartes begins 
his " Principles of Philosophy " with the statement 
" that in order to seek truth, it is necessary once in 
the course of our life to doubt, as far as possible, of 
all things." He resolves to make it a rule of life 
never to assent to anything which he does not 
clearly and distinctly perceive. A matter is clear 
when it " is present and manifest to the mind 
giving attention to it." It is distinct when it is pre- 
cise and different from all other objects. It is well 
known that the senses sometimes deceive us. The 
dipper handle in the bucket of water seems to be 
bent. Objects which are far off seem to be near. 
We do not always hear what is said, and sometimes 
we seem to hear what is not said. Memory too is 

[274] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

a very unsafe guide. Misunderstandings abound. 
Hearsay testimony is not worth much, though the 
tendency of the untaught to beheve it without -ques- 
tioning is very great. Men are, many of them, un- 
trustworthy. Much that is printed in papers and in 
books is not so. Seeing is not beHeving, hearing is 
not beHeving, reading is not beheving. Even think- 
ing, if it is not carefully checked up and rendered 
mistake-proof, may result in error. Mind has a 
peculiar proneness to delusion. Education does not 
perform its work unless it makes the learner a keen 
discriminator between truth and falsehood. 

The student must be taught to collect and 
weigh evidence, to verify statements, to compare 
authorities, to go to the sources for information 
in doubtful matters. Where it is possible, he must 
get into the habit of proving his work. Sufficient 
unto the day is the exactness thereof, but even little 
children are able to begin to distinguish truth from 
falsehood and to pass upon the probability or im- 
probability of the stories they read. Make-believe 
they love, but they do distinguish it from believe, 
and upon the continuous fostering of that distinction 
rests the effectiveness of teaching. 

The major ideals of the race are developed by 
acts of conscious selection called for and persisted 
in in the work of the everyday studies. To add a 
column of figures and then to check up one's result 

[275] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

is quite a different operation from summing them 
once and being satisfied that the answer is correct. 
To try to get the point of view of the British as 
well as that of the colonists, or of the South as well 
as that of the North in the great w^ar, teaches a 
better lesson than to take the one without the 
other. The student of geometry should consider 
carefully what proving a proposition means, for if 
the process is but an arbitrary series of statements 
to him, he will learn nothing. The same is true if 
he stops short of seeing the reason for anything 
wdiich he is asked to comprehend. Above all, he 
has a right to be convinced that w^iat passes for 
truth is founded upon evidence, and he must be 
encouraged to doubt and to insist upon doubting 
that which does not convince him. The centuries- 
old notion that doubt on the part of young people 
or of adults is sinful must give way to the better 
doctrine that doubt fosters belief and is its precious 
precursor. 

What should be memorized? While to commit to 
memory all that one seeks to learn is a bad thing, 
since it makes comprehension impossible, some part 
of that which one studies should be memorized. It 
is a safe rule that nothing should be memorized 
until it is first comprehended. Most of our learning 
should remain in that form, but some parts of 
it must be committed verbally. It is perhaps as 

[276] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

certainly wrong not to memorize what should be 
memorized as it is to memorize what should only 
be comprehended, but it is hardly so likely to 
happen. Memorizing has a place in education, 
though it is hard to keep it in its place. What 
would happen if we remembered everything, if the 
events of yesterday persisted in their completeness ? 
There would be no to-day. It is only by forgetting 
the happenings of yesterday that I can give atten- 
tion to the events of to-day. Forgetting, then, is 
highly important. Without it there would be no 
new experiences at all. Yet if it were complete, 
there w^ould be no new experiences either, for it 
is through our old experiences that we get our 
new ones. For the most part, the old ones keep 
themselves alive. Certain parts of them disappear, 
but their core remains. Significant experience is 
rarely completely forgotten. To make it a perma- 
nent possession one has only to see to it that its 
meaning is clearly grasped and a strong wish to 
retain it developed. Memorizing w^ords is a differ- 
ent matter. Normal forgetting drops the details 
and retains the significant substance of a matter. 
Verbal memory strives to retain the detail of 
language. 

The first question to be asked about any matter 
which should be retained is. Is this something 
which interest and understanding will keep alive 

1^77 ^ 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

and reasoning restore at will, or are its details so 
important that it would be valueless if only the 
substance of it were recalled ? Wherever the letter 
is indispensable the letter must be remembered, 
and special efforts will have to be put forth to 
establish the associations which will fix it in mind. 
The multiplication table must be recalled not in 
substance but in exact detail ; so must the formula 
for finding the diameter or the circumference of 
a circle. Certain grammatical rules and exceptions 
call for the same treatment. Quotations which get 
their value not from their thought but from the 
perfection and significance of its expression must 
also be recalled literally. Formulas and formularies, 
poetry and hymns, the basic dates of history, place 
names and the names of significant personages, 
are the sort of content which should be committed 
verbally.^ As a rule, not enough attention is given 
to fixing them in mind, and far too much to devel- 
oping a verbal mastery of rational matters which 
comprehension alone will take care of. 

What should beco77ie automatic^ and how can it 
be made so ? Certain parts of experience make still 
heavier demands upon us. All that we strive to 
learn must be comprehended. Some part of it 
must be committed to memory and a part must 

1 See the excellent discussion of this subject in Fitch's Lectures on 
Teaching, p. 121. E. L. Kellogg & Co., New York. 

[278] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

be reduced to habit. Habit means " having " ; but it 
is a having which has become organic and nearly 
automatic. We said a moment ago that the multi- 
pHcation table should be committed — that is really 
only a stage in the process of its mastery. The 
person who, when called upon to multiply seven 
by nine, has to stop and say over " seven times 
nine " in order to get their product has only partly 
learned the combination. The result should come 
instantly with automatic precision. One does not 
have to stop to recall the name of a letter nor how 
to form it when he has need for it in writing. It 
comes of itself. In shaking hands the right hand 
presents itself instantly, and in walking, while we 
may watch where we are stepping, the step comes 
of itself. Yet all these acts were learned. It is 
perhaps impossible to indicate in detail just what 
parts of our learning should become automatic, just 
as it was impossible to state in detail what parts 
should be memorized. Examples of what is meant 
may be given. Working by the problem should 
become a habit with each student ; so should hunt- 
ing for material to supplement the textbook dis- 
cussion and volunteering to take part in the class; 
so should asking questions, stating diflficulties, inter- 
posing doubts, and insistence upon being convinced. 
Courtesy should become habitual, and with it the 
cardinal virtues. A correct bodily carriage and the 

[279] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

proper position for work should become organic. 
The sounding of combinations of letters, the shap- 
ing of writing, the spelling of commonly used 
words, the correct use of speech, and a thousand 
other details of instruction must become habitual. 
In forming any habit, it is well to launch one's self 
with as much momentum as possible. This means 
that the student must know what he is undertaking 
and why, and with what expectation he is to go 
about it. A lively initial interest must drive him 
forward. It is commonly supposed that repetition 
will do the rest. This is an error. Repetition, 
except of a certain kind, is worse than useless. 
Doing the same thing over and over again com- 
monly results in doing it worse and worse instead 
of better and better. You and I walk a great deal, 
and we shall walk a great deal more before we 
die, but will our walking improve by that practice ? 
We write a great deal, but shall we write better 
and better as the days go by because of our much 
repeating of that act? No, merely doing a thing 
over and over again does not help us to do it 
better. There is an old story, which deserves to be 
taken much to heart, of a boy who persisted in say- 
ing, " I have went," until his teacher's patience 
could bear it no longer. Whereupon he was com- 
manded to stay after school and write the correct 
form one hundred times. He did so, and in the 

[280] 



ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 

absence of the teacher at the moment that he had 
finished, he left this note for her, " Dear Teacher: 
I have done my lesson and have went home." 
Repetition without the effort to improve does not 
make our walking or our writing any better than 
it was before, and repetition without the effort to 
improve is of small benefit to any student. 



[281] 



CHAPTER X 

DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

An outline history of examinations. When the 
Emperor Antoninus Pius created the first public 
professorship at Athens, he unintentionally institu- 
tionalized one feature of instruction which has ex- 
acted rather a larger tribute of human energy than 
is its due. For the practice came into being that 
the teacher who was to be paid out of the imperial 
treasury should be selected from the whole number 
of candidates for the post, by means of an examina- 
tion. And the professors, having learned how impor- 
tant examinations were to themselves, quickly passed 
them on to their students. Education had gone on 
for some six hundred years or more in Greece with- 
out them, and it had been able to do its work well, 
as the results of the Socratic age show. Neverthe- 
less they became an essential part of its procedure, 
and in the eyes of many students and teachers the 
determining feature in its work. 

An apprentice must be able to use the tools of 
his trade before he can be employed as a journey- 
man. In medieval days he had to be tried out be- 
fore he was admitted into the trade gild. The first 

[282] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

universities were nothing but gilds or unions of 
teachers. They adopted the gild method of apply- 
ing technical tests to the students who sought 
admission into their company as masters. And ex- 
aminations grew greatly in importance. Since their 
trade was to teach, the student apprentice was 
invested with the insignia and the rights of the 
teacher only after he had given formal proof of his 
ability to do the work of the gild. With him 
'' Commencement " was a literal beginning of his 
life work. It consisted of certain private exami- 
nations, a sample lecture or the maintaining of 
a thesis, and his solemn inception into the gild. 
This academic ceremony tested the ability of the 
candidate to do what he was henceforth to do, 
namely, teach certain books according to certain 
established methods. It was an ordeal made neces- 
sary by its object. 

The modern examination has preserved almost 
every feature of the medieval one save its object. 
That older one was employed to find out whether 
a man was fit to do a certain thing that he aspired 
to do. The modern examination exists primarily to 
determine whether the student knows what it is 
conceived that he should know. This change in 
purpose made it possible for the examination to 
take the form of written answers to written ques- 
tions, the first written examinations in Europe 

[283] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

having been given, as it seems, at Cambridge in the 
year 1702. Written examinations having been in- 
vented quickly commended themselves as an easily 
workable device which every teacher of no matter 
what subject should apply early and often. 

Are exammations trustworthy? No thoughtful 
teacher can frame the questions, read the students' 
answers, and endeavor to mark their standing on 
the basis of one or two examinations without 
gravely questioning the finality and even the worth 
of this procedure. 

Undoubtedly society must protect itself by de- 
manding that the person who invites its confidence 
as a practitioner of medicine, law, or teaching shall 
first be required to submit evidence of the validity 
of his claims to technical expertness to some com- 
petent authority. Such examinations should have 
no other purpose than to establish the trustworthi- 
ness of the person who seeks an opportunity to use 
his skill in the service of folks who are not in 
a position, before engaging him, to test it. Their 
object is to find out whether he can do what he 
offers himself as being able to do. 

But the examinations which are repeated with 
such frequency in schools are not of this sort. 
Yet they are often a bar to the future work which 
the student desires to do. The assumption which 
is behind the practice of exacting them seems to 

[ 284 ] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

be that they are a necessary method of testing the 
student's fitness and furnish a more rehable gauge 
of his abihty than any other which can be devised. 

Are they necessary? The teacher who gives the 
examination and reads the paper is usually the 
person who has given the instruction. He has 
met his classes daily ; he can give as many review 
lessons and exact as much written work from his 
students as he requires to make him thoroughly 
familiar with their progress. Why should not his 
estimate of their fitness be based upon this day-by- 
day knowledge of them ? " But they must be given 
a chance to show what they can do in an ordeal." 
Then the examination is not intended to test their 
ability, but rather to test their self-control, and it is 
unfair to them to rate their ability by it. If this is 
admitted, the defender of formal examinations will 
most likely take refuge in the statement that the 
teacher who is not required to hold them at fixed 
intervals will not, w^ien left to himself, demand 
sufficient written work to train his pupils in exact- 
ness. The examinations are required on this view 
in order to regulate the teacher, and to mark the 
students' standing by them is again unfair. Private 
colleges, as well as school systems, have an un- 
doubted right to attempt thus to supervise the 
work of teachers both within and beyond their juris- 
diction if they want to, but they must remember 

[285] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

that they make the students pay dearly for the 
arbitrary uniformity which they thus try to exact. 

Are they reliable? The teacher who estimates 
a student's famiHarity with a subject by his abihty 
to answer six or ten examination questions is judg- 
ing him by means of a sample. He may fail to 
answer this list of questions, but may pass another 
list with distinction. In his preparation for the 
examination he may have worked on the very pas- 
sages which he is asked to render, or he may have 
prepared others which have no place in the paper. 
" But he should be prepared for anything which 
may come." No, he cannot be prepared for every- 
thing which may come, for frequently questions are 
asked which only a minutely technical interest sug- 
gests. Again, the sample performance, by which 
the student's term's work is valued, may be taken 
on a day on which he is much below par. There is 
perhaps as much variation in setting papers as in 
marking them. If there is, the student has but a 
slight chance to be adequately judged, for carefully 
conducted tests have shown a variation of as many 
as seventy points in the reading of the same papers 
by members of the same staff of teachers. Uniform- 
ity in grading the same papers, even when the 
teachers of the subject attempt beforehand to agree 
upon a standard of marking, seems to be quite 
unattainable. Few school systems and few colleges 

[286] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

have made an effort to standardize their marking. 
An A grade may mean from go to loo to one in- 
structor, and from gj to loo to another; a B from 
80 to gy to one and from jo to go to another. One 
man may mark handwriting, spelHng, composition, 
facts memorized and constructive abiHty shown, all 
with the same care ; another may disregard every- 
thing but the substance of the thought. 

Yet the school judges its students, and the 
students judge each other and, worst of all, them- 
selves by these marks. 

They reduce the sciences to features of an examina- 
tion system. The greatest harm which the examina- 
tion works is not this gross misjudging of students, 
but its tendency to reduce the sciences which are 
taught and the teachers and students who study 
them to servants of an examination system. Knowl- 
edge is not primarily a body of exact answers to 
exact questions. It cannot profitably be put into 
the form of a catechism. To emphasize its exami- 
nable features is to make it arid and jejune. The 
information test is an appeal to memory. What is 
committed in order to prepare for it is soon forgot- 
ten, and unless the examination is an incident and 
not the organizing principle in what is done, per- 
manent interests are not developed, the free play of 
intelligence is not stimulated, and the social utility 
of learning is obscured. The student studies for the 

[287] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

examination. His scheme of values gets out of per- 
spective. Instead of mastering his subject, he 
learns to " size up " his teacher in an effort to 
anticipate the questions which he will probably be 
asked in the examination, and in place of studying, 
he adopts the method of " cramming." What is per- 
haps even worse is that after measuring himself once 
or twice, he becomes satisfied that he can hope for 
nothing more than the mark which he has already 
obtained, and henceforth aims at the degree of effi- 
ciency which it represents. Over and over again 
the students confess, " Oh, I am only a C student." 
The influences that play upon them instead of lift- 
ing them above mediocrity confirm them in it. 
When a mark has once been recorded both the 
teacher and the student are almost certain to forget 
that it was arrived at so carelessly that it has but 
a temporary value. It imposes upon both of them. 
It is only a most inexact estimate of the student's 
accomplishment of a particular task, but they take it 
as an indication of what he can do in a given sub- 
ject and commonly enlarge it into a registration of 
his general intelligence. 

Realizable reforms. Teachers are much too con- 
firmed in the examination habit to give it up, 
though a large sized experiment like that of con- 
ducting a university or a school system for a term 
of years without a single formal examination would 

[288] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

be of immense service to the cause of learning. 
The abnormal dislocation of interest which they 
involve would at least have a chance to right itself ; 
and that would perhaps give an opportunity for the 
making of a course of study on the basis of reason 
instead of tradition. But such an overhauling of 
educational machinery is perhaps out of the ques- 
tion. Yet certain reforms are possible. One of 
them consists in making the school examination a 
test of what the student can do, rather than of what 
he knows. The information test is a memory test. 
It can be met by "cramming." It is a false incen- 
tive to work, and it does not lead to normally 
organized activity on the part of the student. The 
doing or capacity test has an altogether different 
value. It calls for knowledge of what is being 
learned, not knowledge about it. Questions about 
isolated facts have no place in such a paper. The 
student is given a piece of work to perform. He 
must show his mastery of the facts involved by 
organizing them to solve his problem. The test 
is constructive ; it is like the demands which life 
makes. It calls for analysis, but only as a means 
to construction ; thus it organizes knowledge by 
keeping its parts in place. 

The kind of examinations the Chinese noiv employ. 
Yet not every problem is a vital problem, and the 
danger which this kind of an examination runs is 

[289] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

of becoming merely a scholastic exercise. The peo- 
ple of China have had rather more experience with 
examinations than any other body of educators. 
There is a significant difference in the kind of 
problems which they now set from those they 
formerly employed. "In 1828," says Mr. Williams, 
" the acumen of four thousand eight hundred candi- 
dates was exercised during the first day on these 
themes : Tsang-tsz' said : ' To possess ability, and 
yet ask of those who do not ; to know much, and 
yet inquire of those w^io know little ; to possess, 
and yet appear not to possess ; to be full, and yet 
appear empty.' — 'He took hold of things by the 
two extremes and in his treatment of the people 
maintained the golden medium.' — ' A man from 
his youth studies eight principles, and when he 
arrives at manhood, he wishes to reduce them to 
practice.' — The fourth essay, to be written in pen- 
tameters, had for its subject, ' The sound of the oar, 
and the green of the hills and water.' Among the 
themes given out in 1843 were these: 'He who is 
sincere will be intelligent, and the intelligent man 
will be faithful.' — 'In carrying out benevolence 
there are no rules.' In 1835 one was, ' He acts as 
he ought, both to the common people and official 
men, receives his revenue from Heaven, and by 
it is protected and highly esteemed.' Among other 
more practical texts are the following : ' Fire-arms 

[290] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

began with the use of rockets in the Chan dynasty. 
In what book do we first meet with the word for 
cannon ? Is the defense of Kaifung fu its first 
recorded use ? Kublai Khan, it is said, obtained 
cannon of a new kind ; from whom did he obtain 
them ? Wlien the Ming Emperors, in the reign of 
Yungloh, invaded Cochinchina, they obtained a 
kind of cannon called the weapons of the gods ; 
can you give an account of their origin?'"^ 

Now compare with these the list of questions^ 
submitted in the year 1903: 

HoNAN. What improvements are to be derived from the study 
of foreign agriculture, commerce, and postal systems ? 

KiANG-su and An-huei. What are the chief ideas underlying 
Austrian and German prosperity ? How do foreigners regulate 
the press, post office, commerce, railways, banks, bank notes, com- 
mercial schools, taxation, and how do they get faithful men? 
Where is the Caucasus, and how does Russia rule it? 

KiANG-si. How many sciences, theoretical and practical, are 
there ? In what order should they be studied ? Explain free trade 
and protection. What are the military services of the world ? 
What is the bearing of the Congress of Vienna, the Treaty of 
Berlin, and the Monroe Doctrine on the Far East ? W^herein lies 
the naval supremacy of Great Britain ? What is the bearing of the 
Siberian Railway and Nicaragua Canal on China ? 

1 Williams, The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I, p. 552. New York, 1883. 

2 Quoted in Brown's " New Forces in Old China " from the Report of the 
Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the 
Chinese, Shanghai, 1903. I am indebted for these very significant refer- 
ences to Mr. D. M. Beers of the class of 191 5 of Harvard University. 

[291] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

Shantung. What is Herbert Spencer's philosophy of sociology? 
Define the relations of land, labor, and capital. State how best to 
develop the resources of China by mines and railway ; how best 
to modify our civil and criminal laws to regain authority over 
those now under extraterritoriality privileges ; how best to guard 
land and sea frontiers from the advance of foreign Powers. 

FuKiEN. Which Western nations have paid most attention to 
education, and what is the result? State the leading features of 
the military systems of Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and 
France. Which are the best colonizers ? How should tea and silk 
be properly cultivated ? What is the government, industries, and 
education of Switzerland, which, though small, is independent of 
surrounding great powers? 

KwANG-TUNG (Canton). What should be our best coinage — 
gold, silver, and copper like other Western countries, or what ? 
How could the workhouse system be started throughout China? 
How fortify Kwang-tung province ? How get funds and profes- 
sors for the new education ? How promote Chinese international 
commerce, new industries, and savings banks versus the gambling 
houses of China ? 

Hunan. What is the policy of Japan — only following other 
nations, or what ? How choose competent diplomatic men ? 
Why does China feel its small national debt so heavy, while Eng- 
land and France with far greater debts do not feel it ? 

HuPEH. State the educational systems of Sparta and Athens. 
What are the naval strategic points of Great Britain, and which 
should be those of China ? Which nation has the best system of 
stamp duty ? State briefly the geological ages of the earth and 
the bronze and iron ages. Trace the origin of Egyptian, Baby- 
lonian, and Chinese writings. 

Standardizing examinations. But reform our sys- 
tem of examinations as we may, the feeling has 

[292] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

become general that even at their best they will 
not afford sufficient knowledge of what is actually 
being accomplished by instruction. Educators, as 
President Lowell has pointed out, are too much 
given to " relying on formulas." The conviction 
is fast gaining ground that the claims which arc 
made by them must be submitted to objective 
measurement. It is necessary that personal opinion 
should count for less in determining the value of 
studies, the procedure of instruction, and the worth 
of the product, and that verifiable methods which 
any competent observer may employ should be 
devised to gauge and rectify what is being done. 
This is so large a program that several generations 
will be required to carry it out. In fact, there is no 
end to such an undertaking. What it really means 
is that those who follow the calling of the teacher 
must set themselves resolutely to get a more exact 
knowledge of what they are doing than educators 
have had hitherto. 

Quantitative exactness comes from counting. 
Mathematics is not more certain than logic, but 
where logic must answer with a bare Yes or No, 
mathematics can tell how much. Whatever can be 
reduced to a common denominator can be counted, 
and whatever can be counted can be compared, and 
this comparing of group with group, condition with 
condition, discloses principles which may be applied 

[293] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

to produce the results which arc desired. Counting 
offers the very great advantage of enabhng one to 
become acquainted with the significance of facts 
without being overwhehiied by direct contact with 
them. By fixing attention upon aggregates, empiri- 
cal laws are discovered which the study of indi- 
vidual cases would not reveal. Besides, the study of 
aggregates enables us to supplement and verify the 
hypotheses of deductive reasoning. 

In view of these very great advantages, it is not 
strange that a social science such as education, with 
limited opportunities for experimental research, 
should call to its aid the resources of statistical 
investigation. 

Measuring some of the results of instructio7i. 
The application of statistical methods is indeed 
not new in education, for studies of cost and at- 
tendance have long been made. What is proposed 
and attempted now is a much more thoroughgoing 
distribution of these figures and the numerical 
coordination of many more facts. It is possible to 
measure cost per student hour of instruction, and 
in that way prevent disproportionate expenditure. 
It is possible to measure the efiiciency of a school 
system in terms of the success and failure of its 
students to meet the requirements of the different 
grades, and it is possible to measure the effective- 
ness of a school system in terms of its power to 

[294] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

attract and hold its students after the compulsory 
attendance law has set them free to decide whether 
or no they shall continue in its classes. 

Is it possible to measure the quality of the 
product ? The examination fails to do that. Its 
questions are not weighted, the same credit usually 
being given for correct answers to each of them. 
There is no objective standard of accomplishment. 
The markers vary greatly in the value which they 
put upon the papers. Is there any way by which 
standards can be established and degrees of approxi- 
mation to them distinguished and counted ? 

It was not possible to know the amount of land 
that one man sold to another, or the distance from 
one place to another, until a unit of linear measure 
had been adopted. It w^as not possible to determine 
the amount of oil or wine a man sold to his neigh- 
bor until a standard of liquid measure had been 
devised. And it was not possible to fix the value of 
commodities which were offered for exchange until 
a unit of exchange value was established. Just so 
the discovery of the principle of specific gravity and 
the invention of the thermometer made possible 
exactness of distinctions which had been vague and 
uncertain before. 

If the results of instruction are to be determined 
with exactness, they must be measured, and before 
they can be measured, scales must be devised with 

[295] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

which to measure them. A great deal of energy 
has ah'eady gone into the effort to make such 
scales. Professor Thorndike was the first to attempt 
to develop one for measuring handwriting. The 
unit of his scale equals approximately one tenth 
of the difference between the best and the worst 
of the formal writings of one thousand children in 
grades five to eight. The differences represent 
equal fractions of merit, as determined by the judg- 
ments of from twenty-three to fifty-five competent 
judges, who graded the samples of writing into 
groups according to their estimate of general merit. 
This scale, then, is as much more exact than a 
single individual's judgment of the degrees of ex- 
cellence in writing as the judgment of fifty-five 
competent judges of general merit in handwriting 
is more reliable than the judgment of one. But 
what is general merit in handwriting? Is it an 
arbitrary pronouncement of the persons who act as 
judges, or is it itself measured by a principle ? The 
chief requirement in a standard measure is that 
men will adopt it. For them to adopt it, it must 
commend itself to them. Dr. Leonard P. Ayres 
thought it better to measure handwriting by legi- 
bility than by general merit, since legibility can 
itself be evaluated in terms of the differences in 
time required to read the several grades of hand- 
writing ; and by means of elaborate experiments, he 

[ 296 ] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

constructed a scale for measuring legibility. It must 
be noted that this scale measures only that one 
aspect of writing. It does not enable us to deter- 
mine what slant should be used, for though it shows 
that the most legible writing is the vertical slant, 
instruction in the use of that slant has been aban- 
doned in the schools for other reasons. Speed, 
which is an essential element in handwriting, is not 
measured by this scale. 

Hillegas developed a scale for measuring the 
degrees of merit in English composition. Ballou 
has endeavored to perfect it. Buckingham has 
sought a measure of spelling ability. Hanus has 
devised a scale for measuring work in the trans- 
lation of Latin. Elliott has endeavored to provide a 
measure of teaching capacity. But the most elabo- 
rate effort of all which have yet been made in this 
direction is Courtis's series of tests in arithmetic. 

Mr. Courtis says that '* educational measurements 
are sharply differentiated from ordinary examina- 
tions in many ways. The purpose of examinations 
is to measure the efficiency of individuals ; that of 
educational measurements, to determine the effi- 
ciency of the teaching process itself. Examinations 
are varied from grade to grade and from topic to 
topic, but if the results from standard tests are to 
have meaning, exactly the same tests must be given 
under rigidly uniform conditions to all — whether 

[297] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

men, women, or children, and without regard to 
their ages, grades, or types. Under uniform con- 
ditions the men, women, or children may be meas- 
ured with respect to any single mental ability 
covered by a test just as truly as they may be 
measured in respect to any single physical trait, 
as length by the use of a single standard unit. 
We do not hesitate to measure both the new baby 
and his grandfather with the same foot rule, or to 
weigh them both on the same scales. Further, an 
examination once used can seldom be repeated. 
But results from repeated trials of a mental test 
may have the same general significance, from the 
point of view of growth, that repeated measure- 
ments of the weight of an individual may have. 
In educational measurements, repeated tests not 
only may, but must be, made." ^ 

What these scales do and do not tell. While the 
ideal of scientific or exact measurement is greatly 
to be commended, there is grave danger that the 
weighing and measuring apparatus may not be as 
scientifically correct as they should be, and that 
they may be used in ways for which they were not 
intended. The yardstick will not tell you whether 
or no you ought to buy carpet, but if your room 
needs it, it will help you to determine the quantity 
which you require. The scale will not tell you how 

1 Proceedings of the Harvard Teachers' Association, 191 3, p. 32. 

[298] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

many pounds you ought to weigli, but only how 
much you do weigh. The foot rule will not tell you 
how large a house you should build, but it will help 
you to make an intelligible plan. Moralists are in 
the habit of distinguishing the criterion from the 
standard. The criterion is an " ideal " ; the stand- 
ard is a measure. Whether it is well for a man to 
own his own home or not is one question. How 
large the lot is which he has bought is another. 
The first one cannot be answered by counting or 
measuring. The second one can. " Science," says 
Mr. Balfour, "depends on measurement, and things 
not measurable are therefore excluded or tend to be 
excluded from its attention." But life and beauty 
and happiness are not measurable. " If there could 
be a unit of happiness, politics might begin to be 
scientific." ^ Certain results of instruction can be 
measured, as, for example, the degree of legibility of 
handwriting, when matched with the corresponding 
sample on the Ayres scale ; or accuracy and speed 
in adding or subtracting numbers when tried by the 
Courtis test. These standards help us to know a 
great deal more exactly than we can know without 
their aid the value of the results which we are 
getting — in terms of the standard. But there are 
very important features of the learning process 
which they do not measure and do not attempt to 

1 Quoted by Sir Oliver Lodge, Science, September 19, 1913. 
[299] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

measure. One of these is the interest which stu- 
dents take in the process which they are acquiring ; 
another is the value which they are learning to at- 
tach to it ; a third is the obstacles which they are 
overcoming; and a fourth, the degree of momentum 
with which they are likely to carry these processes 
on after leaving school. One trouble with the ex- 
amination as a test of learning w^as that it got 
results only on the day of the examination. If re- 
sults only are measured, will not processes be neg- 
lected ? The main object of education is not to 
mature results, but to develop processes in such a 
way that the growth of after years will perfect them. 
It is not the business of the elementary school to 
impart that degree of skill in calculation, in pen- 
manship, and in the use of language, which only 
the maturer years and the specialized training 
of the higher commercial schools render possible. 
If the work of the elementary school is tested by 
standards which may be used to measure its work as 
well as the finished work of professionals, will not 
the inevitable result be to foster a professionalizing 
of its product ? 

Another kind of scale which we need. Sit down 
with a package of forty specimens of children's 
handwriting in front of the Ayres scale for meas- 
uring penmanship. What will it tell you about 
them? It will help you to find out what each 

[ 300 ] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

specimen is worth, as you compare it with the scale, 
in terms of handwriting. That, precisely, is never 
a problem which the working teacher has to solve. 
His question is essentially different. It always 
takes the form, What is this bit of writing worth, 
as coming from a ten-year-old or a twelve-year- 
old child ? An abstract measuring of handwriting 
or arithmetic is one thing. It requires a positive 
standard. But the measuring of a given child's 
performance must be in terms of the child as well 
as in terms of the subject matter. For this purpose 
we need a relative scale. One might as well attempt 
to measure the manhood or womanhood of little 
children as to measure any other developing quality 
which they possess in terms of a positive standard. 

The scales thus far worked out enable us to 
distinguish degrees in arithmetic, writing, com- 
position, etc. They also measure deficiency from 
an absolute standard. They not only tell us how 
much we have, but they tell us how much we ought 
to have — how much we fall short of perfection. 
That is, they are both standard measures and 
standards of performance. But the carpenter's foot 
rule does not tell him how high to build the build- 
ing; he must consult his plans for that. The bal- 
ance will not tell you how much you should weigh, 
but only how much you do weigh. These two con- 
cepts must be kept apart. The standard measure of 

[301] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

instruction should be a device by which to measure 
the stages of instruction, not a statement of an ideal 
to be attained in it. Why can we not have scales 
which establish the norms of attainment and the 
degrees of variation from them of children in the 
first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and 
eighth grades? The scales which we have do not 
measure increments of growth ; they measure defi- 
ciency from an absolute standard. When the Ayres 
handwriting scale is tacked up on the wall of a 
schoolroom, the children bring their exercises and 
compare them with the one in the upper right-hand 
corner, for that they think stands for perfection. 
And frequently the teachers think so too. A scale 
which would show the normal results in penman- 
ship for children of their age, with the subnormal 
and the supernormal arranged by degrees above 
and below it, would not be so discouraging and 
would enable both the teacher and the pupils to 
measure their work. " We do not hesitate to meas- 
ure both the new baby and his grandfather with the 
same foot rule, or to weigh them both on the same 
scales." Quite true, but to say that a child is fifty 
inches high and weighs seventy-seven pounds is not 
to know anything scientifically about him. Such 
facts are only the " substratum of everyday judg- 
ments " upon which scientific measurements and 
coordinations are based. How old is he, and how 

[302] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

do his present height and weight compare with the 
norms of height and weight which have been estab- 
Hshed, or are being estabhshed for children of his 
age ? The scientific physician weighs and measures 
him in pounds and inches that he may weigh and 
measure him in norms. That is, he weighs and 
measures him quantitatively that he may weigh 
and measure him qualitatively. Why does he want 
to compare his condition with norms of growth? 
Not that he may record an interesting fact in the 
child's natural history, but that he may, if possible, 
find out what there is to be done to better control 
and direct his future. That is, his weighing and 
measuring of the child is for diagnostic purposes. 

Right here we come upon three very helpful 
considerations. The first is that science employs 
and coordinates two kinds of measurement to get 
such results as educators are trying to get by one. 
The second is that the process of establishing 
norms is different from the process of measuring 
actual conditions. And the third is that these 
actual conditions, when coordinated with the norms 
of development, serve only to direct a search for 
matters which must be adjusted to bring about the 
results which are desired ; that is, they furnish an 
aid to diagnosis. 

The scales which have been devised seem to con- 
fuse the criterion and the standard. They attempt 

[ 303 ] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

to measure quality and quantity on one and the 
same yardstick. This is due to their borrowing 
the nomenclature of the percentage system of 
designations ^ of merit from the scheme of marking 
examination papers, and applying it in a way in 
which it is never employed in that system. On 
the Ayres writing scale go means the most legible 
sample of wTiting which was submitted, but a 
teacher of wTiting frequently marks a third-grade 
paper go, meaning by that only that the w^ork con- 
forms to her conception of what third-grade work 
near its best should be, and in so far as her con- 
ception is correct, she is right. If the scales are 
intended to measure quantitative differences only, 
their distinctions should be designated by neutral 
symbols which leave no implication that they fur- 
nish a standard of what is to be done. The samples 
in the right-hand columns might be called x degree 
writing, those in the next one y degree, and so on. 
Thus the scale would be a standard measure of 
recognizable degrees of difference in writing and 
w^ould run no risk of being mistaken for an exem- 
plification of the kind of writing that children 
should be doing. If a given child's exercise, when 
measured by the standard, is found to be v degree 

1 This criticism does not apply to Thorndike's scale for measuring 
handwriting, which has a distinct advantage over some of the others 
in this respect. 

[304] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

writing, the teacher's next step is the same as that 
of the physician, when told that the child weighs 
50 pounds, namely, to find out what the age of that 
child is, and then to compare that result with the 
norms which have been established for children of 
that age. In scientific knowledge the fact is con- 
ceived " in relation to the facts by which it is sur- 
rounded." It is one thing to distinguish degrees of 
perfection in handwriting or arithmetic, and quite 
another thing to put the proper value upon a given 
child's accomplishment in handwriting or arithmetic. 
The standards which we have judge arithmetic, but 
not the child-learning-arithmetic. 

Norms of growth cannot be established by statistics 
alone. How shall we establish in the several subjects 
the norms of growth with which it is necessary 
to coordinate the positive results attained in order 
to measure the relative efiiciency of the child ? 
Statistics alone will not furnish them to the edu- 
cator any more than they will to the physician. 
Statistics furnish facts — the norm is a realizable 
ideal. The normal health of a given locality may be 
very different from the average or mean condition 
of health of its people, as the norm of healthfulness 
which Colonel Gorgas followed in cleaning up the 
city of Havana was very different from the average 
of the conditions as he found them. The norm is 
a model, something to work toward, an available 

[305] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

optimum, an ideal which is attainable when the 
causal connections are properly controlled, and not 
merely a registration of the effects of conditions as 
they now are. Just as it is the function of every 
development in the science of medicine to con- 
tribute its quota to the ever-growing conception of 
what health may be, so it is the function of every 
genuine discovery in the field of education to play 
its part in shaping the realizable norms of instruc- 
tion. The science is a practical one, and every 
method of discovery which yields results must be 
employed to inform us concerning its possibilities. 
What is being done may conceivably fall far short 
of what should be done, in which case a statistical 
study of it will not be of great directive value. Up to 
1870, reading was almost everywhere taught by the 
alphabet method. The most thoroughgoing tabula- 
tion of what was being accomplished by that prac- 
tice would not of itself have established the normal 
way to teach reading. Advance in every line comes 
by studying its defects intensively rather than by 
establishing a consensus. 

Psychology, child study, medicine, and the logical 
criticism of concepts which belongs to the princi- 
ples of education must evaluate the results which 
the statistical and experimental study of education 
furnish. Only by such a coordination is a science 
of education possible. 

[306] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

Grave danger that statistical methods may be 
applied where they do not belong. There is grave 
danger that statistical results may assume to fur- 
nish the ideals of education and determine courses 
of study just as systems of accounting have at- 
tempted to organize the administration of cities. 
One might as well attempt to make a school sys- 
tem with a pickax as by the results established 
by a system of accounting only. The mariner's 
compass does not tell you where to sail, but only 
where you are. You must consult your charts, the 
winds, the weather, and the seaworthiness of your 
craft, to find out whether you are in danger, and 
your destination and your log to find out how to 
port your helm. The statistical study of results 
tells what has been done ; but other considerations, 
among them the nature of the undertaking and the 
nature of the child, must be combined with it to 
determine what should be done. 

An illustration of this tendency. A specific illus- 
tration of a possible misdirection of educational 
effort through the power of the tests which are im- 
posed is the following from the Annual Report of 
the Superintendent of Schools of New York City for 
191 3: "As every school man knows, examinations 
largely determine the character of teaching. What 
the examiner calls for, that the teacher will teach. 
Now, the Courtis tests in arithmetic constituted an 

[307] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

examination, and this examination I fear may lead, 
in the minds of inexperienced teachers, to a wrong 
conception of their aims. These tests laid unusual 
stress on speed in the manipulation of numbers. 

" We all know that speed in the manipulation of 
numbers is an important intellectual asset in the 
business world, and that it is well worth a serious 
effort to attain. I submit, however, that accuracy is 
much more important. What will it profit a busi- 
ness man to have his clerk add up a column of 
figures in thirty seconds if the resulting sum is 
incorrect ? The commercial and manufacturing 
world demand accuracy as the first qualification in 
figures, and accuracy should be our first aim in 
teaching arithmetic. 

" Now the Courtis tests lead in precisely the 
opposite direction. In that examination the chil- 
dren were driven at top speed throughout. They 
were allowed no time for checking or verification 
of results. If our teachers should follow the ex- 
ample set in that examination, they w^ould do an 
irreparable injury to our pupils. 

" Some years ago I advised our principals and 
teachers that in their practice w^ork in addition, 
children should be required to verify the result for 
each line of figures before proceeding to the next 
line. The method suggested was to add each line 
first up and then down, and as often as necessary 

[ 308 ] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

until a uniform result was obtained. I advised 
similar precautions in the other fundamental rules. 
I still cling to this theory — not speed at the ex- 
pense of accuracy, as in the Courtis tests ; but 
accuracy first and speed afterward should be the 
aim of the New York schools. 

" Some such notion seems to have occurred to 
Mr. Courtis since the New York tests were given, 
as he writes me that he has since somewhat 
modified them." 

The power to test is the power to control. The 
nature of the test shapes the work which is given 
and the scheme of values which is set up. This 
new device is a two-edged sword in education. 
It must be handled with care. The very effort to 
measure results instead of processes seems to shift 
the focal point unwarrantably. 

A truer measure of results. Those who devised 
the tests have no such intention. We can measure 
process only in terms of results. What they desire, 
doubtless, is a means of checking up processes. 
But the burden of our whole discussion has been 
to show that education is to be measured by its 
success in setting up vital processes in such a 
way that they will be indispensable to the person 
who has once learned to use them as long as he 
may live. According to this view, the true test of 
the efficiency of a school is not to be found in an 

[309] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

examination, no matter how carefully devised, which 
would determine whether an eighth-grade student 
can read, write, add figures, spell the words he 
should spell, pass in history, or what not. The true 
test of the school's efficiency consists in finding 
out whether or not that student, thirty years after 
graduation, say, is still a man who reads, who writes 
and spells w^ell, who uses scientific methods, who is 
historically minded and still in particular, not in 
general, shows that in his youth he began to learn 
a way of life. It seems next to impossible to devise 
and apply a system of tests of this kind. Yet these 
are the features of education which determine its 
worth, and until we can gather the measurable 
ri^sults of this great experiment for a number of 
years we shall still be in the land of vagueness and 
uncertainty. In charity work it has become cus- 
tomary to follow up the case that has been helped, 
through a term of years. The good home follows 
its sons and daughters, taking account of their suc- 
cesses and failures through life. In these days of 
eugenic inquiries, extending back over a number 
of generations, a scientifically devised examination 
of its students, by a school, after they have had 
thirty years in which to deepen or forget w^hat they 
learned in it, does not seem unw^orthy of repeated 
trial. The results of all other examinations would 
speedily sink into insignificance beside this. 

[310] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

The proper way to use rules and standards. But 
there is another kind of examination with which 
education is beginning to concern itself in a very 
Hvely fashion. It is the systematic effort to fit his 
work to the student, not the student to the work. 
The principles which science formulates are short- 
hand expression of facts, each of them " a type 
of a series of possible facts." ^ The well-founded 
distrust of uniformity of procedure as based upon 
such generalizations, rules, or laws, can be met only 
by remembering their nature and learning how to 
use them. It is the misuse of the standard, not the 
standard, which must be fought. No general princi- 
ple can embrace all particulars. We have a system 
of courts to fit the laws to particular cases ; a body 
of practicing physicians to fit the principles of 
medicine to the conditions of their patients. It is 
not by establishing uniformities that education will 
become a science, but by establishing uniformities 
in connection with the particulars out of which they 
grow, and to minister to which is the sole reason 
for their existence. 

It is said that no two engines made from the 
same pattern consume the same amount of fuel, 
develop the same power, require the same amount 
of lubricating oil, disclose the same structural weak- 
nesses, nor last in service for the same number of 

1 Enriques, Problems of Science, p. 8i. Chicago, 1914. 

[311] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

days. An engineer who attempted to treat them 
in exactly the same way would destroy, in part, at 
least, the usefulness of one of them. This prin- 
ciple of dissimilarity is deep seated in nature. 
It impressed the philosopher Leibniz so profoundly 
that he regarded it as a fundamental fact in the 
make-up of the universe, pointing out that no two 
leaves on the same tree are alike, and no two beings 
have exactly the same nature. Some folks believe 
that there is only one right way to do a thing, and 
all the other ways are wrong. Mr. Kipling did not 
agree with them when he wrote : 

There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays 
And every single one of them is right. 

It is altogether likely that there is no one uniform 
and eternally right way of doing anything, that the 
right which is not merely an abstraction is always a 
function of a situation which is individual, and will 
never repeat all its details in any other situation. 

The trtie place of uniformity i7i edtication. But 
while situations are different in details, and indi- 
viduals and even machines are different, and call 
for differences in treatment, situations are also like 
other situations, and individuals like other indi- 
viduals, and machines like other machines. There 
are uniformities in them all, and if we take these 
uniformities as part of what we are dealing with, 

[312] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

not the whole, we shall find them useful. The 
United States Government finds it useful to uni- 
form its soldiers, but if it attempted to put a uni- 
form amount of cloth into each soldier's dress, the 
result would be unhappy. It applies the principle of 
uniformity where it belongs and finds it serviceable. 
Just so in education, school systems ought not to 
be alike, or to expect to be alike, in the details of 
their administration, their courses of study, their 
methods of teaching, or the objective results which 
they get. The principles of education must be 
applied, which means that they must be interpreted 
in terms of the situation. Within the system the 
same application to individual conditions must be 
made, or life-killing regimentation will usurp the 
place of education. Those schools therefore are the 
best which are doing their utmost for the individual 
child. Since it is vastly more important to have a 
mentally alive child in a schoolroom than a dead 
subject of study, we must not make the mistake of 
defining education in terms of a fixed quantum of 
knowledge or even of rigidly prescribed studies to 
be pursued. What we seek primarily is to help 
each child to use his own mind. To get and keep 
a living and expanding interest, a searching, re- 
flecting, organizing, using, mental activity, going on 
in young children, it will be necessary to meet them 
where they live. Instruction must adapt itself to 

[313] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

the interests of the place in which it is given, to the 
traditions and culture of the homes from which the 
children come, to their age and advancement, and 
to their mental variations. Uniform courses of 
study, uniform textbooks, uniform methods of teach- 
ing, and uniform results must go the way of out- 
worn shibboleths. Their uniformities must vary to 
meet individual cases. 

Clinical psychology and educatio7u The very prac- 
tical science of clinical psychology has for its object 
the studying and diagnosing of individual mental 
behavior, in order to find out how to minister to 
its needs. This science has not developed so far as 
to lead the men engaged in it to regard themselves 
as the servants of a body of theoretical distinctions 
which are of value in themselves. They are keenly 
practical in what they are doing, and the classifi- 
cations which they make are diagnostic merely. 
Professor Wallin distinguishes two general classes 
of cases — those in which the mental variations are 
primary and the physical disabilities accessoiy, and 
those in which physical deviations are primary and 
mental variations sequential. Under the first class 
he groups feeble-minded children^ insisting that the 
bettering of their condition is essentially an edu- 
cational problem ; retardates, of whom he believes 
there are not less than 6,000,000 in the schools of 
the United States, some of whom are retarded 

[314] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

simply because the curriculum is abnormal, others 
because of arrested development, others because 
their environment handicaps them, and others be- 
cause of physical defects ; the sicpernormals, who 
need only special opportunities for work, but with- 
out them develop a kind of enforced mediocrity; 
speech defectives such as stutterers, lispers, etc. ; and 
incipiejit psychotics, or children who show the be- 
ginnings of mental disorders. The second class is 
made up of cases of malnutrition, rickets, tuber- 
culosis, heart trouble, chorea, etc. Here the treat- 
ment called for is primarily medical ; in the first 
class it is primarily educational.^ 

Here is a tremendous engine of discovery, whose 
significance to parents, children, and teachers is 
beyond estimation. It provides a knowledge not 
of groups or of attainments in studies, but of the 
individuals to be educated. For the hit-or-miss 
methods of a more or less arbitrary objective pro- 
cedure, this practice w^ould substitute a basic prin- 
ciple of organization, the diagnosis of the child 
himself. When we measure in order to determine 
regulative principles, we must in the last resort 
measure the primary reality with which we have 

1 Wallin, " Clinical Psychology," Science, June 13, 1913. See also the 
Psychological Clinic, edited by Professor Witmer ; The Training School, 
published by the New Jersey Training School, Vineland, New Jersey; 
and the publications of the Psychopathic Institute of Chicago ; particularly 
Dr. Healy's recent book, " The Individual Delinquent." 

[315] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

to deal. That primary reality in education is the 
individual child. Courses of study we may change, 
for the demands of society are conventions which 
can be made or unmade, but the nature of the 
individual child is given. Everything else must be 
related to it. 

Guidance based upon diagnosis. Another appli- 
cation of diagnosis to education is the important 
activity known as vocational guidance. Its func- 
tion is to help young people to find the callings 
for which they are fit. To help them in this way 
demands an elaborate study of the distinctive re- 
quirements of the several occupations, and a care- 
ful investigation of the traits and capacities of the 
given individual who seeks advice as to what occu- 
pation his talents indicate he should follow. The 
problems which this procedure present are so very 
difficult that only a beginning has been made in 
solving them. That there are individual traits that 
should serve as indexes of the specific functioning 
which a young person can reasonably hope to per- 
form, no one perhaps will deny ; but what these 
distinguishing traits are remains to be found out. 
A number of men and women are at work upon 
this problem. Much has already been done to col- 
lect and distribute information as to the require- 
ments which a number of occupations make. The 
literature of vocational guidance is already large 

[316] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

and is growing rapidly. There is need for a similar 
fitting of studies to mental aptitudes while education 
is going on. 

The most significant statement which I find in 
Mr. Courtis's reports of the vast and important work 
which he has performed is this : " My thesis is that 
we must practice what we preach; the teaching 
of children is a far more complex task than even 
the wisest of our leaders have realized ; that we 
must begin over again and evolve new methods, 
new courses of study, new ideals of education 
generally, and that all must be based upon the 
central idea of determining and ministering ade- 
quately to individual needs. At present, our school 
products are uniform from city to city, because a 
certain degree of development is easily secured by 
any method ; because, also, even a very great in- 
crease in time and effort produces only slightly 
greater results. That is, the benefit of class instruc- 
tion is limited, and the limits are quickly reached. 
Improvement can come only by the adoption of 
methods and opportunities for supplementing class 
instruction with work with individuals." ^ 

A thoroughgoing reconstruction of class teaching. 
By far the most thoroughgoing reconstruction of 
class teaching of which I know has been going on 
since the beginning of the year 191 2 in the State 

1 Proceedings of the Harvard Teachers' Association, 1913, p. 44. 
[317] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

Normal School located in San Francisco. Dr. Fred- 
eric Burk, the president of the school, has recently 
issued a bulletin setting forth an outline of their 
plan and results, under the title " Lock-step School- 
ing and a Remedy." The considerations which led 
them to abandon the class system of instruction 
were: first, admitted failure of that system to pro- 
duce creditable results ; and second, the fact that 
from one third to one half the pupils remaining in 
the schools in a large number of typical cities are 
above the age which is normal for their grades. 
This condition seems to be common to schools, no 
matter how well they are administered or taught. 
Accordingly, the cause must be some common 
feature which lies behind teaching and adminis- 
tration. They began to suspect the class system as 
the enemy of the child for the reason that though 
children are different, the class system required 
them to take a lesson of the same length each day 
and to learn it with the same degree of thorough- 
ness. It assumes the same degree of simultaneous 
attention in all, in spite of illnesses, absences, wor- 
ries, and all kinds of personal ups and downs. It as- 
sumes that all will progress and be promoted at the 
same rate. It measures a pupil's work not in terms 
of his own ability, but by comparing it with that 
of a fictitious average pupil who has no flesh-and- 
blood existence but is merely a dividing line to 

[318] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

separate those who are above the average from 
those below it. The class system does permanent 
violence to all the pupils; for those who could travel 
faster than the average are shackled to it, and those 
who should go more slowly must seem to keep up 
with it. This required keeping of the step robs 
both kinds of pupils of natural inducement to work 
and prevents the normal growth of individuality. 
It makes the brighter pupils dawdle and the slower 
ones it discourages. Indeed, it does much more harm 
than this, for it perverts instruction. For, take two 
children who are set to learn the same lesson — let 
it be the combination of eight plus five ; assume 
that one boy learns it and the other does not. What 
should the next lesson be for each? It should be 
different, but under class teaching it is not. 

The prime fact is the pupil. He is different from 
his fellows in motives, speed of comprehension, 
difficulties, and firmness of grip. But it is he, and 
not the nonexistent "average pupil," whom the 
schools must put in the way of becoming a self- 
reliant pupil-thinker. How to get every student to 
put all his talents at interest is the problem. 

The faculty of the normal school resolved to cut 
away obstructions. The first one which it met was 
the textbook. Its language is incomprehensible, 
hence its words are memorized. It provides lessons 
of the same length for pupils who require lessons of 

[319] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

different lengths. Current texts are made up for 
the most part of facts and definitions to be memo- 
rized. They contain no adequate provision for re- 
views. " Knowledge," the faculty said, " does not con- 
sist in learning definitions, nor in committing state- 
ments about facts. It consists in using them." 
They set out to teach each student to write a sen- 
tence and to use the multiplication table, rather than 
to define a sentence without being able to write it, or 
to recite the multiplication table without being able 
to multiply numbers correctly. For this purpose 
flexible texts ^ had to be produced, providing many 
varied exercises on the same principle for the stu- 
dent who required much familiarity with it to make 
it stick, and few for the pupil who mastered it quickly, 
and supplying a wide range of work from which a 
selection could be made to fit the needs of each. 

The makers of these lessons sought to omit all 
abstract explanations from them, to make each 
lesson begin as the learning of a doing set forth in 
it so simply that each pupil can master the prob- 
lem by his own effort. Difficulties are introduced 
one at a time. There are duplicate exercises in 
plenty, making the lesson sufficiently long to de- 
velop accuracy where it is slow in growing, or to 
allow a few trials only and a quick advance to the 

1 Such texts suitable for individual work have been published by Ginn 
and Company under the title " Minimum Essentials." 

[320] 



DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 

next lesson to the person who masters the principle 
at once. Reviews are automatically provided by 
being embodied in subsequent lessons. 

The results, " We are astonished at our imme- 
diate results, in changed spirit, in reawakened 
young ambitions and energy, in rapidity of pupils' 
progress, and in our own enthusiasm," writes 
Dr. Burk. The individual classroom is a workshop 
where each student is busy with his own work. It 
is the function of the teacher to learn what each 
one can do and the motives which prompt his 
doing. She is there to help him to his work, and 
to give him the encouragement of approval and 
assistance when he needs it. Going from desk to 
desk to help pupils who perhaps did not need it, 
these teachers soon found to be debilitating to their 
scholars, for " substantial learning " can be secured 
only by the pupil " putting his own mind through 
the given process." The familiar recitation is com- 
pletely abandoned, but when, by individual doing 
of work, a group of pupils have familiarized them- 
selves with an epoch of history, a geographical 
area, some problem of industry, or other unit of 
study in a given field, the classroom becomes a 
forum in which they are brought together for a 
" Socratic discussion," for the mutual clarifying of 
their ideas upon it. Such deliberations have a 
regular place in the weekly program. 

[321] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

An effort is now being made to work out a 
course of study to cover eight years, the allotment 
of work in each year to be determined by what the 
slowest pupils can reasonably accomplish in that 
time. Since each one advances as rapidly as he 
can, the others will complete the w^ork in a shorter 
period. No one is demoted, or turned back to re- 
peat a grade. Promotion by a card is a merely 
nominal recognition of what has been accomplished. 
The school day is divided into short work periods, 
and each child's work is regulated in such a way 
as to vary his activities according to his need. 
Home study is entirely abolished. From twenty-five 
to thirty per cent of the pupils are advancing much 
more rapidly than the usual class rate. From ten to 
twenty per cent are going more slowly than under 
the class system, but they are doing thorough work, 
and not giving an appearance of keeping up only. 

This plan differs from earlier forms of individual 
instruction in that it abolishes the individual reci- 
tation of a memorized lesson. A teacher guides 
the work of as many pupils as under the class 
system. The correction of written work is the real 
difficulty. But the pupils do that, for " the prin- 
ciple is sound that, as a means of learning in most 
subjects, there is no exercise quite so productive 
and thorough as the correction of errors." 

[322] 



CHAPTER XI 

LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

The essential thing in education. As long as 
schools exist the most important thing about them 
will be not their budget, nor their buildings, nor 
their administration, nor their teachers, nor their 
examinations, nor even the branches of learning 
which make up their course of study; the most 
important thing about them will be what their 
students do. These other things are necessary that 
the work of schools may go on, but they are only 
means to that end, that end, their work, being a 
doing on the part of their students, a doing of such 
a kind that the students will have to go on repeat- 
ing it as long as they live, a doing therefore which 
the experimenting of the ages has found to be 
necessary and which their fellow men in days to 
come will require from them. But these other 
things — the money needed for the maintenance of 
the schools, the buildings needed to house them, 
the corporation or the board of education, the presi- 
dent of the college, the master or superintendent of 
schools, the professors or the teachers who " give the 
instruction," and, most of all, perhaps, the subjects 

[323] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

which they study — keep getting in the way of the 
students' work and arrogating to themselves by 
turns a kind of monopoly of attention which keeps 
the nature of the educational undertaking sadly 
obscured. However, experienced teachers of teach- 
ers are not at all uncertain as to the relative impor- 
tance of these elements in the educational process. 
When they send their apprentices to visit the work- 
shops of other teachers they charge them above 
everything to watch what the students are doing, 
and after that to give attention to what the teacher 
is doing to facilitate the students' w^ork. When 
they inspect schools themselves they keep their 
eyes upon that aspect of them. For what the 
learner does is the essential thing. 

What should the student do? To find out what 
the learner should do one must hunt down the 
meaning of a good many very familiar words — 
words whose meaning their very familiarity has 
tended to confuse and obscure. Concerning them 
one must ask himself the Socratic questions : What 
is education ? What is knowledge ? What is mind ? 
What is truth? What is science? What is litera- 
ture ? What is culture ? What is a vocation ? What 
is personality? etc. In short, he must criticize the 
concepts of education. The human endeavor which 
goes at matters in that way is called philosophy. 
It forces one to trace the connections and relations 

[324] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

of things which the sciences take for granted and 
study separately. One who studies chemistry is not 
required to study the philosophy of chemistry, and 
one who studies physics or biology may neglect to 
criticize the assumptions of these sciences, but one 
who studies education must not neglect to work 
out his own philosophy of education in the light of 
what men have already thought about its meaning 
and its purposes, for education is an integrating 
process, and to make wholes or personalities it must 
proceed from the knowledge of the whole. All real 
philosophy has education for its object, and all real 
education must ground itself in philosophy. 

A superseded theory of educatio7i. There was a 
theory of mind which maintained that human expe- 
rience was built up by impressions. David Hume 
was its prophet. " An impression first strikes upon 
the senses and makes us perceive heat or cold, 
thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain, of some kind or 
other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by 
the mind which remains after the impression ceases; 
and this we call an idea. . . . To give a child an 
idea of scarlet or orange, of sweet or bitter, I pre- 
sent the objects, or in other words convey to him 
these impressions ; but proceed not so absurdly, as 
to endeavor to produce the impressions by exciting 
the ideas. . . . This priority of the impressions is an 
equal proof that our impressions are the cause of 

[325] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

our ideas, not our ideas of our impressions." ^ These 
isolated or separate impressions associate them- 
selves into complexes by a sort of spontaneous gen- 
eration, and mind Hume describes as a "bundle or 
collection " of these single impressions " in a per- 
petual flux of movement." Though he begins with 
the impressions and expressly disclaims any impli- 
cation as to their source, he constantly implies that 
they are, as in the case of scarlet or orange, 
presented by objects. 

We have here, therefore, the basis of a simple 
and generally accepted theory of education. Im- 
pressions and ideas, which are their copies, come 
to us from objects. To give the learner the impres- 
sions the teacher must present the objects. If they 
are only presented, the impressions will come of 
themselves and the ideas, or copies, will remain. 
Spontaneous, or natural, association will do the rest. 
The whole process of education is synthetic, a 
building up of single impressions one after another 
within the mind, and a trusting to their spontaneous 
fusion to organize them. 

The theory which has superseded it. This psycho- 
logical doctrine reigned with nearly undisputed 
authority until Professor James published his " Prin- 
ciples of Psychology" in 1890. Even Immanuel 
Kant, who gave Hume the credit of having roused 

1 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, sections I and II. 

[ 326 ] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

him from his dogmatic slumber, accepted Hume's 
notion that experience starts with a manifold of 
impressions, clear cut, distinct, and separate, though 
he proceeded to show that mind does not allow 
them to bundle themselves as they please, but 
organizes them according to certain principles of 
its own nature. Experience getting was for him 
still a synthetic process, a putting together of bits 
or units of experience into the mosaics into which 
mind, because of its organizing nature, insisted 
upon building it. 

But Professor James announced a radically dif- 
ferent view, and knowledge getting took on a cor- 
respondingly different definition. The most obvious 
thing about consciousness, he said, is that it is a 
stream. We start not with separate and distinct 
impressions. We start w^ith a confusion, with a 
vague, onrushing, unbroken flux of feeling. We 
see nothing clearly at first, we hear nothing clearly, 
we feel nothing clearly. Experience is not built up 
out of separate impressions at all. Education is not 
a building up of such impressions by the presenting 
of things to deposit them and their copies in the 
mind. " Out of this aboriginal sensible muchness 
attention carves out objects, which conception then 
names and identifies forever — in the sky ' con- 
stellations,' on the earth 'beach,' 'sea," cliff,' 'bushes,' 
'grass.' Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights,' 

[327] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

'summers' and 'winters.' We say what each part of 
the sensible continuum is, and all these abstracted 
ivJiats are concepts. The intellectual life of man 
consists almost wholly in his substitution of a con- 
ceptual order for the perceptual order in which his 
experience originally comes ^ ^ 

This doctrine reverses the problem of education. 
According to Hume and his successors its task was 
that of presenting impressions. According to James 
its task is that of carving out objects from the con- 
tinuum of feeling. The teacher is no longer a com- 
pounder of impressions — his duty is not to objects, 
but to what goes on inside the mind of the learner. 

How does this carviiig out of objects proceed? We 
bring with us certain instinctive, selective tenden- 
cies w^hich force the aboriginal flux of feeling into 
consolidations or clusters w^hich we call things. But 
very strangely, as we have seen, we do not name 
these separate or isolated things. Our naming is 
all of classes or kinds of things. If we would name 
a thing as it is experienced at a given moment, we 
must employ a phrase such as " this table, " " the 
book there," or " that horse." Our names are all 
class symbols or devices for dealing with recurring 
experiences of similar kinds. They indicate past 
experiences and expectations as well as the present 
particulars to which we apply them. 

1 James, Some Problems of Philosophy, p. 50. New York, 191 1. 

[328] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

It used to be thought that these general names 
or concepts grew out of particulars or percepts; 
that one must have had a certain number of expe- 
riences of men before he could by abstraction arrive 
at the notion of man. But psychologists now teach 
us that the concept and the percept arise together. 
" The child begins with what seems to be a ' general' 
His earliest experiences, carried over into memory, 
become general copies which stand as assimilation 
nets for every new event or object. All men are 
'papa,' all colors are 'wed,' all food 'mik.' ... It is 
only partially true that the concept arises from the 
percept at all. It is rather true that the two arise 
together, by the same mental movement, which is 
apperception or motor synthesis. Going back again 
to that neglected period, infancy, we may ask, as a 
matter of fact, what takes place. 

" Suppose, after the very common method of the 
day, a single presentation. A, in the infant con- 
sciousness ; then suppose it removed. The child 
is now ready to germinate forward and backward, 
future-ward and past-ward. He remembers and he 
expects. Viewed as memory, his experience. A, is 
particular, a sensation, after a time a percept. But 
it includes more than his simple receptive state. 
He reacts to it, and so stands ready to react to it 
again. This readiness is his expectatioji, — the tend- 
ency he has to a definite reaction; and as the only 

[329] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

one it stands ready to 'go off' on any kind of stim- 
ulus which is locally near enough to discharge that 
way. His memory has become schematic of the 
future viewed as expectation, it is the whole of the 
child's reality; it is what will happen, for it is all 
that can happen ; he knows nothing else. What- 
ever then actually does happen is at first reacted to 
as A, and remains A, by this active confirmation, if 
it is possible for the child's consciousness to keep 
it A." ^ Thus mind by its own inherent nature 
selects what is vital to its necessities from the sen- 
sory continuum, and from it constructs its world. 
It organizes its surroundings in accordance with its 
own constitution just as the tree or the plant does. 
From concepts of the first degree it proceeds to 
concepts of the second degree, and in due order 
to concepts of the third degree, by progressive con- 
solidation distinguishing new particulars within the 
sensory flux and operating with them as anticipa- 
tions, differentiating and classifying as long as con- 
sciousness continues in this state of existence. For 
it is not only the baby's immediate sensory life, but 
every man's at every age, which is a big, blooming, 
buzzing confusion from which his mind must select 
its own materials of objects and processes according 
to his vital needs. The instrument with which he 

1 Baldwin, Mental Development, Methods, and Processes, pp. 309-310. 
New York, 1906. 

[330] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

makes this ever-continuing selection is his reaction 
system, his system of concepts, his body of ways 
of anticipating and sorting the sensory flow. The 
problem of education then, like the problem of phi- 
losophy, concerns the nature and use of concepts. 
They are the vessels with which the water of life 
may be dipped from the stream of consciousness 
and applied to human uses. 

The nature and uses of concepts. The thinker, 
says Plato, is one who is able to distinguish the 
one from the many and to recognize the one in its 
various combinations with actions and things. The 
knowledge which he seeks is knowledge of the one, 
is knowledge of the nature of things. These are 
hard sayings and have been persistently misunder- 
stood. The one of which Plato is speaking is the 
circle as distinct from circles, the triangle as dis- 
tinct from triangles, the truth as distinct from 
truths, justice as distinct from particular acts of 
justice, goodness as distinct from this, that, and the 
other good deed. The thinker is one who is able 
to discern the circle or the triangle in the shaped 
things he must work with, and thereby determine 
their character and the uses which he can make of 
them, or who, having the pattern of truth or jus- 
tice in his soul, can and will shape his deeds and 
the whole ordering of his affairs accordingly. And 
knowledge is of the one because he who would 

[331] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

know and work with circles must know the circle ; 
he who would serve truth must know what truth 
is; he who would establish justice on earth or his 
corner of earth must know what justice is ; and 
he who would grow plants must have a concept of 
plant life to organize his deeds. The words which 
we use always express more than the facts which 
they seem to designate. When we talk of a point, 
or line, or circle we are talking about things which 
we cannot draw or visibly represent. When we 
speak of the truth, or of equality, justice, humanity, 
plant life, etc., we speak of existences which eye 
hath not seen nor ear heard, but which it has en- 
tered into the mind of man to conceive. They are 
not things, but thoughts which order and arrange 
things; they are ideals by which we organize the 
perceptual stuff of existence. The concept is the 
way we relate the parts of experience, the principle 
or law, the meaning or significance of the things 
with which we work. The things with which we 
work pass away, they flow by us, they are in cease- 
less change, but their meanings do not change. 
This round column will in time be broken up, 
the lie which was told a moment ago will be 
forgotten, the acts of barbarity which that nation 
committed will be blotted out from the book of 
human remembrance, but how long will circles 
be circles? How long will truth be truth? How 

[332] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 



long will justice be justice ? Here are life interests 
which do not pass away. 

The relation of concepts to tilings. Let us illus- 
trate the relation of concepts to percepts in a 
figure. Let the lines A B and C D represent the 
ladder of life, or the course through which one 

A C 



passes from birth to death. At every moment in 
that course he is surrounded by an infinity of par- 
ticular things, some very few of which his necessi- 
ties force him to take note of and to use. One 
after another, as occasion arises for them, he picks 
them out from the vague which surrounds him 

[333] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

and names his anticipations of them. This group is 
bread, that is clothing, that is shelter. This body 
of related facts is geometry, that is religion; this is 
morals, that is knowledge. The vertical lines which 
cross the moments of existence are our life interests 
or ways of organizing the incessant flow of particu- 
lars. They are our concepts, or principles by which 
we thread our way through this maze. Since they 
are our life interests and the interests of the race, 
they have a much greater permanence and import 
than the quickly vanishing facts or particulars 
which stream by so ceaselessly. Yet while they are 
vastly more important than the facts of any single 
moment, we must remember that their sole func- 
tion is to harness this flux of things, that their only 
value is that they bring facts to us and take us to 
the facts or experiences which we desire. 

The kind of knowledge which we seek. We con- 
ceptualize only a small part of our experience. We 
might, as w^e have seen, name and classify the many 
appearances and reappearances of the table, the 
chairs, the books, and of every other object which 
we see, hear, smell, touch, or taste, at every possi- 
ble distance and from every possible point of rela- 
tion, just as we might classify the books in our 
libraries by the number of times the letter a or 
the word the or any other letter, word, mark, or 
discernible difference appears in each. But we do 

[334] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

not, and the reason why we do not is that the con- 
ceptuahzing of such percepts would be of no pos- 
sible use to us. What we seek is a reality which 
will help us in our work, not a reality which we 
can only describe. The notion that knowledge is 
the description of reality takes no account of human 
purposes, and leaves us rudderless victims of a 
horizonless sea of facts. While it is true that con- 
cepts are not the sensible equivalents of sensations, 
they are the changes which we bring about in per- 
cepts to organize them into activities. History may 
be described as a faithful account of what hap- 
pened in time past. The history of the Civil War 
then would be a full report of the events of the 
war. But these events were infinite in number. 
They not only cannot be found out and described, 
but most of them would be of no significance even 
if they could be. The first thing which the histo- 
rian must do is to select from this mass of happen- 
ings that very small part which had significance. 
He schematizes these into a systematic whole and 
offers us this as the history of the period. Dead 
facts he endeavors to omit, but living facts, that is, 
events and considerations which the bulk of folks 
to whom he addresses himself must still take ac- 
count of and reckon with, he seeks to incorporate 
into his story. Because the facts which are perti- 
nent to the vital interests of one generation are 

[335] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

not always those which were pertinent to the in- 
terests of the generation which preceded it, each 
generation must rewrite the history of the past from 
its own standpoint. The sensory experiences which 
the men of the past had and the records which they 
made of them have not of course changed, but our 
interest in these events has changed. So through 
the nets of contemporary interest we strain the 
ancient happenings over and over again, and the 
result of this straining we call history. Each new 
generation thinks that it has at last succeeded in 
writing the definitive account of antiquity, but the 
next generation is as unwilling to accept its inter- 
pretation as final as it was the interpretation of the 
men who went before it. 

This same process of selection and interpretation 
determines the content of science. The known 
facts do not change, but the questions which we put 
to them are kaleidoscopic in their variety. Even 
geometry, which was long held to be the perfect 
specimen of absolute knowledge, has recently under- 
gone surprising development. There was a time 
when men looked upon " an eye for an eye " and 
" the divine right of kings " as unchanging princi- 
ples of social knowledge. We look upon them now 
as almost inexplicably self-imposed limitations of 
human intelligence. In this way the final truths 
of past generations are outgrown. 

[336] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

Knowledge cannot be given. It comes only from 
searching. Since knowledge seems to insist upon 
being not what we find but what we take, not what 
is given but what is hewn out of an infinity of 
possibiHties, what goes on inside the mind of the 
learner is more important than what was in the 
mind of the textbook maker when he wrote his 
textbook or of the teacher who explains it. Since 
they cannot communicate their thoughts any more 
than they can communicate their toothaches or 
their 'headaches, they must help their students to 
find ways to generate similar thoughts within them- 
selves. They must give up the effort to present 
knowledge ready-made and content themselves with 
the humbler, but much more exciting, task of sur- 
rounding their disciples with inducements and ne- 
cessities to make it, each out of his own experience. 
A school conducted on this principle is in the 
active, not the passive voice. Its students are en- 
gaged in asking their own questions and in defin- 
ing their own purposes. So far as they can they 
carry out their own plans ; they bring up from their 
own observation and past experience whatever they 
already know that has a bearing upon the problem 
whose solution they are seeking; they question 
folks both inside and outside of school to get the 
information that their specific undertaking requires 
them to get; they consult books and libraries. In 

[337] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

all this they are learning to work by purposes, to 
put two and two together to accomplish what they 
want, to hunt in many ways for what is needed but 
is not at hand, to pick out that which has much im- 
port from that which has little import, to make up 
their own minds as to the value of the materials 
and statements which they find, to frame their 
own projects, to use their own language, to doubt, 
to question, and to prove. 

Such a school is a workshop as certainly as a 
manual-training room or a foundry is. In it one 
learns to work with mental tools and acquires skill 
in using his own mind. The tools which he learns 
to use are concepts, and the materials which he 
learns to work up by their aid (just as he learns to 
shape lumber with the plane and saw to the plans 
of boxes and boats which he has formed) are his 
own sensations, percepts, and thoughts. 

The best description of the process of edtication 
which I have fotuid. Strangely enough the best 
description of the process of education which I 
have found is in one of the books which have 
begun to circulate widely since the war. It is the 
work of a Frenchman, M. Georges Bourdon, and is 
devoted to setting forth the views of certain repre- 
sentative Germans whom M. Bourdon interviewed 
concerning their own country, its ideals and plans 
of development, both within the limits of Germany 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

and in relation to their neighbors. This book was 
pubhshed in France before the war began. Among 
the representative Germans whom M. Bourdon in- 
terviewed was the principal of an elementary school 
at Neukolln near Berlin, Herr Samuleit, whose 
statement of the aims of instruction is as follows : 
"It is, indeed, customary in all our primary schools 
that the lessons should consist nearly entirely of 
conversations between master and pupils. We 
make of instruction an exchange of ideas, and avoid 
wearying and saturating minds that are still fresh 
and untrained. We consider it as a kind of heresy 
to teach for hours with pupils ranged before us 
who listen but do not speak. All the efforts of 
our actual system are, on the contrary, directed to 
awakening the pupils' interest and mental energy 
during the class. We wish, as we say, to replace as 
much as possible the * study school ' {^LernscJmle) 
by the 'working school' {Ardeitsc/iule), that is to 
say, a school in which the pupil, through personal 
experience, instructs himself. I mean that we de- 
sire to substitute for the passive absoqDtion of the 
master's teaching, the active research of the pupil. 
We would have the former gradually disappear in 
favor of the latter." ^ If such a conception of teach- 
ing as this had obtained in the gymnasiums and 

1 Bourdon, The German Enigma, p. 263. London, J. M. Dent & Sons 
Ltd., 1914. 

[339] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

universities as well as in certain elementary schools 
of Germany, the present " over-drilled " condition 
of the German mind with its awful consequences 
could hardly have been. 

What leanmig to luork with concepts means. 
Learning to work with concepts is a very different 
process from that which goes on in many schools 
of elementary, secondary, and college grade. One 
does not sit quietly and pore over books or listen 
to lectures or recite what has been committed. He 
does not approach knowledge timidly as a thing 
let down from above, which exists in itself and for 
its own sake and whose parts were eternally per- 
fected before he came here. To him it is not like 
that prevailing German notion of the state, a thing 
apart from and above the individual men and women 
who compose it. To such an ejective idolatry he is 
not under bondage, for it is not fostered within him. 
He learns from the first that knowledge is man- 
made; that its purpose is not to describe what is, 
but to help folks in doing what they want to do; 
that since it is an instrument the only way to 
master it is to use it; that every subject which we 
study is an enumeration of certain important human 
facts, the attitudes which men have learned to take 
toward them, the processes by which men have 
learned to handle them, thus far, most successfully, 
and an invitation to the student to go and do 

[340] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

likewise with them. The states of which we read 
are ways of Hving together, from which we have to 
choose that one which most appeals to us and in 
our thoughts and acts to give it being. The truth 
of which we are told is a process of searching out 
meanings which we must learn to employ; the logic 
which we study is a series of safeguards which each 
of us must learn to observe ; the ethics which we 
discuss has for its object the bringing of each one 
of us to select his own point of view and method 
of thinking and acting in order to embody them in 
conduct ; the literature which we read is a series 
of runes which have charmed the race and some 
of which will charm us if we but pick them out 
carefully and let them say themselves over and 
over again in our souls. 

The origin of the idolatry of knowledge. Every 
educational discussion before Aristotle w^as on some 
aspect or other of the question, What shall a man do 
in order to live well ? ^ Every educational discussion 

1 Isocrates, like his master Socrates and his fellow student Plato, 
thought of education as learning to do what man must learn to do in this 
world, not as learning to know. He states his position in these words : 

" Whom, then, do I call educated, since I refuse this name to those 
who have learned only certain trades, or certain sciences, or have had 
only certain faculties developed ? First, those who manage well the daily 
affairs of life as they arise, and whose judgment is accurate and rarely errs 
when aiming at the expedient. Then, those who associate in dignified and 
honorable fashion with all with whom they come in contact, bearing easily 
and good-naturedly what is unpleasant or offensive in others, and soften- 
ing, as much as possible, their own asperities of manner. Further, those 

[341] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

since Aristotle has more or less consciously im- 
plied the query, What subjects shall a man study 
in order to be educated ? ^ The great classifier had 
no intention to substitute names for acts, but ever 
since he compartmented the field of human endeavor 
subjects of study have tended to appear as ends in 
themselves rather than as means to action. When 
my boy comes home from school and is asked what 
he studied to-day, he replies that he studied history 
or geography. But when I ask what history or 
what geography he studied, he is at a loss for an 
answer. Indeed, the question seems to him to be 
irreverent. Like him, most young learners and a 
good many old ones personify and attribute real 

who never become the slaves of pleasure, and who by misfortunes are not 
unduly cast down — bearing themselves in their presence manfully and in 
a manner worthy of our common nature. Fourthly, and most important of 
all, those who are uncorrupted by good fortune and do not lose their heads 
and become arrogant, but, retaining control of themselves as intelligent 
beings, rejoice not less in the goods they have acquired at their birth by 
their own nature and intelligence than in the benefits that have been 
cast in their way by chance. Those whose souls are in permanent and 
harmonious accord, not with one of these things, but with all of them, 
these, I say, are wise and perfect men, possessed of all the virtues. This 
is my opinion with regard to educated men." — Isocrates, Panath. 30, ff. 
(Walden's translation in " The Universities of Ancient Greece ") 

1 It was Aristotle's division of knowledge into theoretical and practical, 
and his description of theoretical knowledge as due to contemplation in- 
dependent of volition and as existing to enable us to know and only to 
know, that supplanted the sounder teaching of Socrates and Plato and 
introduced confusion into the world. This ancient error must be corrected 
and the sounder view of Socrates and Plato must be accepted once more, 
or education shall never have an organizing principle. 

[342] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

existence to the subjects which they study, and 
then perform lituaHstic ceremonies before the idols 
which they have reared. Some worship philosophy 
and long to serve her; others venerate literature 
and would spend their lives in adoring her; others 
objectify science and talk of her as a goddess; 
others speak of the study of Greek as though heal- 
ing could be had by the touching of these gar- 
ments. This is the false use of concepts. That 
mystical element must be dispelled from studies 
ere they can sei*ve us or we each other by means 
of them. We must get on speaking terms with 
them, we must make them articulate with every- 
day affairs. The question is not what philosophy 
or literature will make out of me, but what I 
can make out of philosophy or literature. Knowl- 
edge does not consist of committing the labels 
which have been attached to things and trusting 
to their magical virtues to produce effects. Man's 
proneness to attribute independent efficacy to the 
creations of his own hands is indeed a dangerous 
phase of the human tendency to delusion. Sciences, 
literatures, conventions, and institutions when they 
have once been shaped exact a tribute of respect 
quite out of keeping with their nature and their 
origin. We treat them as things ; they are col- 
lections of uses, meanings, practices — verbs, not 
nouns. No amount of veneration for, or nominalistic 

[343] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

familiarity with, the several branches of knowledge 
which we have hypostatized will persuade them to 
impart their grace. The folks who invented them 
intended them to be ways of acting — means but 
not ends in themselves. 

A renaming of the sciences is needed. They are 
noun substantives, they should be nouns participial. 
Reading, writing, spelling, numbering, drawing, 
forging, weaving, cooking, painting, when we study 
them, have an immense advantage over physics, 
chemistry, mathematics, history, logic, ethics, and 
literature, just because their names end in -ing, 
leaving no doubt as to their nature and the kind 
of service which they undertake to perform for us. 
The other studies do not invite us to take them by 
the hand. Their -ic and -ry endings intimate to us 
that they are not of our world and that their perfec- 
tion has long since been accomplished. Every child 
finds the alphabet and printed books here when he 
comes; his duty is to use them, and the process 
is called reading. He finds numerous songs and 
musical instruments ; the acts to which they invite 
him are singing or playing or listening. The word 
music is a name for the songs which the race has 
sung and the instruments which it has formed for 
its playing. It also connotes the singing or playing 
or listening which each newcomer to the planet is 
invited to take part in ; that is, it is the name of a 

[344] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

process as well as of an achieved thing. When we 
hear the word music we are more apt to think of 
singing and playing or listening than we are of the 
ready-made historic contribution which has to be 
rendered or interpreted. The -ic of this word is 
really an -ing. It signifies something to be done, an 
activity to be undertaken. But the connotation of 
ethics^ logic, history, literature, mathematics, biology, 
geography, chemistry, physics, rhctojHc, stresses the 
ready-made-thing aspect of these studies and leaves 
their functional purpose quite obscure. If our view 
of them is correct, their prime value does not lie on 
their factual side, but in their directive uses. They 
are not things, they are socially profitable w^ays of 
acting, and when we study them our primary pur- 
pose must be to learn to use their processes. If they 
are present-day activities rather than historically fash- 
ioned objects, we should think of them accordingly, 
and, to assist ourselves in doing so, should employ 
words ending in -iiig to indicate their meaning and 
their value to us. Instead of referring to ethics, we 
would talk about the study of doing or behaving; 
logic would be most commonly spoken of as the 
study of thinking or reasoning; history would be 
searching, substantiating, or constructing the out- 
line of the past; literature, appreciating or criticiz- 
ing; mathematics might be mathematizing; biology, 
thinking about life ; geography, the imaging of the 

[345] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

earth; chemistry, compounding; physics, moving; 
rhetoric, persuading ; composition, composing, etc. 

The advantage of such a facing about in lan- 
guage would be an immediate and nearly universal 
clarification of thought, which would very shortly 
effect radical changes in educational practice. The 
most significant change of all, perhaps, would be in 
the attitude of the students. Instead of being con- 
fused and uncertain, as they now are, as to why 
they are invited to pursue certain studies or how 
they are to study them and what they are to try to 
get out of them, their w^ay would be reasonably 
clear before them. Just as no child is ever very 
uncertain as to what he is expected to do in the 
activities which we call reading and writing, so they 
would not be uncertain as to the part which they 
are to take and the results for which they are to 
strive in each subject which they study. 

Learning according to this view is aliuays specific. 
It is always an effort on the part of the learner 
to himself acquire skill in handling socially profit- 
able material in socially profitable ways. The skill 
which he acquires, the habits which he forms, the 
reactions which he learns to make, are always keyed 
off or called forth by situations recognizably similar 
to those in connection with which they were ac- 
quired. Some of these situations are rare ; some 
are nearly universal. When one form of efiiciency 

[346] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

enters as an element into the handling of a great 
variety of situations, the only caution necessary to 
make it available in all of them is to see that the 
context in which it is developed is sufficiently wide 
to make it consciously connectible with all of them. 
As the purpose of developing the reaction in school 
is that it may not only be used in school but 
throughout life, it is necessary that school practice 
should be built up about life situations, that school 
learning, in so far as it can, should take the life 
form. This principle limits mere exercise work, and 
offers a test by which profitable studies and parts 
of studies can be distinguished from those which 
are merely conventional and profitless. 

Nothing can be clearer, it seems to us, than 
that the purpose of education is to develop certain 
specific attitudes, expectations, reactions, ways of 
going to work or comporting himself in the varied 
situations of life, on the part of the student. What 
we seek in all that we do with him is a certain self- 
initiated doing on his own part. He is an appren- 
tice who comes to us to learn the elements of certain 
highly valuable and humanly indispensable trades. 
These trades all have to do with the shaping of 
human experience. Their content has resulted from 
the accumulated efforts of men in past days. It 
is a series of standpoints, attitudes, rememberings, 
methods of reckoning, ways of attacking, etc. which 

[347] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

have been found to minister to human purposes. 
When the apprentice comes he is initiated into 
them in the hope that they will produce in him 
similar feelings and that, having seen their signifi- 
cance, he will learn to employ them in shaping the 
affairs of his own life. His apprenticeship is spent 
in learning to control human experiences by means 
of concepts. A typical subject matter is given him 
just as the alphabet is given him, and he is required 
to learn to work by means of it. Every study which 
he pursues is not only a body of results of which 
he must become mindful but a system of processes 
which he must learn to employ for himself as long 
as he lives; for the subject matter of the study 
in connection with which he learns them is only a 
typical sample of the subject matter of life. When 
he studies economics, or history, or literature, or 
any other subject, he is learning how to use their 
regulative concepts in ordering his own goings 
and comings, both mental and physical. If this is 
so, the results which he produces and should be 
expected to produce must not be measured by an 
altogether objective standard ; they must be taken 
in terms of his own capacity, past opportunity, pres- 
ent health, encouragement, distractions, etc. The one 
vital question at all stages of his progress will be 
not Does he conform to our preconceived notions 
of uniform results to be attained as determined by 

[34S] 



LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 

examinations, grades, standards, scales, etc.? but 
Does he use his own mind in the degree that he 
can in mastering the processes upon which he is 
engaged ? 

Concepts miist not be misused. One final word of 
warning is necessary. If intelligence works with 
concepts and education has for its task the teaching 
of men to work with concepts, the legitimate use of 
concepts must be distinguished from the illegiti- 
mate. The uniformities which we construct are 
devices to assist us in interpreting experience, 
guides to tell us what to watch out for, not final 
statements of what we are certain to find in every 
case to which we apply them. The doctor who 
diagnoses a case and decides that it is pneumonia 
treats it accordingly, but watches to find out 
whether the reactions which follow confirm his 
diagnosis, and revises his judgment accordingly. 
His application of the concept is tentative and 
ministerial. A child of ten who delights in setting 
grass afire is labeled a pyromaniac. The men and 
women in charge of him when he is twelve con- 
tinue to refer to him as a pyromaniac, at twenty 
or forty he may still be referred to as a pyroma- 
niac, and his chance to reestablish himself as a 
trustworthy individual may by this classification 
be denied him entirely. Likewise, an institution 
child may be robbed of his birthright of equal 

[349] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

opportunity because his teacher has decided that all 
institution children are faikires. A first-grade child 
who has been taught to read by one system and is 
then transferred to a school where a different sys- 
tem is in use may be so helpless in the face of his 
new difficulties as to be named and treated as a 
dullard, to his irreparable loss. The student who 
does not produce the fixed results in a given form 
or subject may indeed be able to produce highly 
creditable results under other conditions. If he is 
classified finally on the basis of the symptoms 
which he exhibits at any given time, great wrong 
will be done him. The concept is always a sum- 
mary of experience up to date, it may not fit the 
facts of to-morrow ; its function is to lead or guide. 
It does not claim to furnish an infallible statement 
of what will happen. To use it as though it were 
more than tentative is to misuse it. 



[350 



INDEX 



Abbott, Jacob, on the business of 
teaching, 4 

Adams, John, 9 

Adolescence, effect of, on hand- 
writing, 148, 200 

Alterthumsiinssenschaft, 1 58 

Angell, J. R., on judgment, 99-100 ; 
on attention, 102 

Aquinas, Thomas, and faculties of 
the soul, 83 

Aristotle, philosophy of, 35 ; on 
education, 77-78, 182; on speech, 
125; on liberal education, 162; 
division of knowledge by, 342 

Arithmetic, a reflective study, ']'i^, 
74; training for the dull, 75; 
W. T. Harris on study of, 148 

Arnold, Matthew, on the study of 
literature, 155-160 

Arnold, R, B., on scientific fact and 
metaphysical reality, 41-42 

Artist, the, Tolstoy on, 133 

Athletics, a knowledge of, 174 

Attention, selective, 101-102 ; psy- 
chology of, 236-240 

Avocational education, 164-169 

Ayres, L. P., measuring standards 
of, 296, 299, 300, 302, 304 

Bacon, Francis, 26, 83, 147, 247 
Bagley, W. C, experiments of, 103 
Baldwin, J. M., 7, 124, 144 
Barnard, Henry, on the study of 

education, 1-2 
Behavior, studying consciousness 

through, 234-236 
Bellini, sharing the poetic insight 

of, 132 
Berkeley, Bishop, on knowledge, 35 
Bonnet, Charles, 86 



Bourdon, M. G., on process of edu- 
cation, 338-340 

Burk, Frederic, 318 

Butler, N. M., on the study of edu- 
cation, 1-2 

Carlyle, Thomas, on the art of 
writing, 147 

Causes, relation to knowledge, 51- 
55; real, 52; unitable with ex- 
perience, 53 

Chesterton, G. K., 13 

Child, the, and knowledge-getting, 
109-113, 116; and the stranger, 
123 ; in the subjective stage, 124- 
125 ; his struggle with institutions, 
126-129 

Class teaching, reconstruction in, 
317-322 

Classics, reform in teaching, 86-87 

Clifford, W. K., on science, 154-155 

Clinical psychology, 314 

College, formal discipline in, 65 

Common-sense knowledge, ex- 
plained, ']-% ; tendency to be 
personal, 9 

Comprehensibility a test of knowl- 
edge, 195-196 

Concepts in education, 323-350 ; 
the essential thing, 323 ; human 
experience and impressions, 325- 
328 ; making impressions, 328- 
331 ; nature and uses of, 331-333 ; 
kind of knowledge sought, 334- 
336 ; knowledge the result of 
search, 337-338 ; learning to work 
with, 340-341; false, 341-344; re- 
naming of the sciences needed, 
344-346 ; specific learning, 346- 
349 ; misuse of, 349-350 



[351] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 



Condillac, E. B., 86 
Consciousness studied through be- 
havior, 234-236 
Content training vs. formal training, 

102-103 
Conversation and oratory, 98 
Conversational method in teaching, 

260 
Courtis tests, 297, 299, 307-309, 317 
Cox, John, on the electron, 41 
Crime, Plato's theory of, 69 
Cultural vs. instrumental education, 

150-160 
Culture, and doing, 193-194; and 

reading, 226 
Curiosity a cause of knowledge, 
188 

Darwin, Charles, as the giver of 
biology, 136; on persistence, 
239 ; as a discoverer, 244-246, 
248 

Dearborn, G. V. N., on the memory, 

95 
Definitions and education, 260-264 
Description, relation to knowledge, 

55 

Dewey, John, on the '' supreme 
art," 204 

Diagnostic education, 282-322 ; ex- 
aminations, 282-293 ; measuring 
I results of instruction, 294-312; 
1 true place of uniformity, 3 1 2-3 1 4 ; 
clinical psychology, 314-316; vo- 
; cational guidance, 316-317 ; re- 
construction of class teaching, 
317-322 

Doctrine of general discipline, 59- 
103. See also General discipline 

Doctrine of real predicates, 260-266 

Doing, learning for, 1 70-1 71 ; the 
end sought, 1 71-174; ways of, 
in music and athletics, 174-175; 
knowing from, 175-179; the 
teacher's attitude toward, 179- 
184; verbal study and, 181-183; 
relation of each study to, 183- 
184 ; education and, 190-193 ; cul- 
ture and, 193-194 



Ebert, F. A., on memorizing, 94 
Education, importance of study of, 
1-5 ; major concern of the race, 
3 ; study of, defined, 3 ; signifi- 
cance of history of, 1 1 ; teacher's 
attitude toward, 14, 23; two typi- 
cal definitions of, 15-17; as the 
perfecting of the mind, 16-17; 
how knowledge is gained, 17-18; 
knowledge as the object of, 19- 
20; place of examinations in, 20; 
place of textbooks in, 23 ; me- 
chanical vs. real, 26 ; a life work, 
27-29, 139; nomenclature of, 61 ; 
purpose of a liberal, 63 ; the 
" grindstone theory," 63 ; relation 
of crime to, 69 ; sole business of, 
77 ; Aristotle on meaning of, 77- 
78 ; Greek and Roman notions 
of, 79-80 ; Quintilian on, 79-80 ; 
views held in Middle Ages, 80 ; 
in the Reformation and Renais- 
sance, 80-85 ; as world building, 
104-141 ; feehngs not transfer- 
able, 105-107; our common world, 
107-108 ; the child making his 
world, 109-116; outside and in- 
side worlds, 116-119; experiences 
tabulated, 120-123; the world of 
persons, 123-126; the struggle 
with institutions, 126-129; knowl- 
edge-getting, 131-135 ; functions 
of the school, 136-141 ; and doing, 
190-193 ; adapting experiences, 
194 ; as the learning of definitions, 
260-261 ; clinical, 314; the essen- 
tial thing in, 323 ; through im- 
pressions, 325-331 
Educator, the, task of, 146 
Efficiency, education for, 160-162 
Elementary grades, formal disci- 
pline in, 65 
" Elementary" studies, 146-150 
Emerson, R. W., on a liberal edu- 
cation, 165 
Environmentand education, 125-126 
Euclid, as the giver of geometry, 136 
Evolution, theory of, and education, 
161 



[352] 



INDEX 



Examination method in education, 
223 

Examinations, history of, 282-284 ; 
untrustworthy, 284 ; unnecessary, 
285 ; unreliable, 286-287 ; result 
of "cramming," 287-288; possible 
reforms in, 288-289 ; Chinese, 
2S9-292 ; standardizing, 292-294 ; 
vs. educational measurements, 
297 ; Bourdon's description of 
process of, 338-340 

Experience, the measure of all 
things, 35 ; objects as the prod- 
uct of, 36; relation of, to truth, 
37 ; causes unitable with, 53 ; re- 
lentless privacy of, 106; Lloyd 
Morgan on, 107 ; language can- 
not impart, 11 3-1 16, temperature 
and, 119 ; relation of, to time and 
space, 120-123; use of, in school, 
269-270 

Facts, relation to truths and knowl- 
edge, 38-44 
Faculties of the mind, formal de- 
velopment of, 90-94 ; general 
training of, 99 ; judgment, 99- 
100; observation, 101-103 
Feeble-minded children, 314 
Feelings not transferable, 105-107 
Fichte, J. G., on a liberal education, 

165 
Forgetting, importance of, 277 
Formal discipline, doctrine of, 62 ; 
in Germany, 64 ; vs. content train- 
ing, 102 
Fracker, on improving the memory, 

97 
Franklin, W. S., on science, 155 
Freud, on early experiences, 126 

General discipline, doctrine of, 59- 
103 ; its cost, 59-61 ; formal disci- 
pline, 62-65 ; harmfulness of, 65- 
66 ; history of, 66-87 ; Plato and, 
66-78 ; Rousseau and, 67 ; Aris- 
totle and, 77 ; Quintilian and, 79; 
the Renaissance and Reforma- 
tion, 80-82; Luther and, 81-82; 



Melancthon and, 81-82 ; Bacon 
and, 83 ; Locke and, 83-85 ; Wolf 
and, 86-87 ; gymnastic training, 
87-90 ; faculties of the mind, 90- 
94 ; training the memory, 94-97 ; 
transferability of training, 97-99 ; 
judgment, 99-100 ; observation 
and imagination as faculties, loi- 
103 

General education defined, 175 

Genetic method, 230-232 

Genetic psychology in the study of 
education, 10 

Geography, study of, 134-135; a life 
interest, 1 50 ; defined, 183 ; a con- 
fusing exercise, 200 

Gergonne, 195 

Germany, formal discipline in, 64 ; 
over-drilling in, 338-340 

Gomperz, on theory and practice 
in education, 5 

Gorgias, on rhetoric, 182 

Grammar, study of, 1 59 ; outside 
the schoolroom, 200 ^ 

Greek, failure of modern method 
of studying, 218 

Greek notion of education, 79 

Greeks, history of, 133-134; igno- 
rance of physics, 178-179 

" Grindstone theory " of discipline, 
63,87 

Habit forming, 278-280 

Hamlet, various conceptions of, 

132-133 
Hanus, P. H., 297 
Harris, W. T., on arithmetic, 148 
Hegel, on culture, 193-194 
Henderson, E. N., on the use of 

the problem, 257 
Herbart, J. F., a reformer of psy- 
chology, 60-61 
Heuristic method, the, 229-230 
" Higher" education, 146-150 
History, as a relative account, 133- 
134; a life interest, 150; as an 
instrumental study, 152-154; a 
dry study, 201 
Hobbes, Thomas, 83 



[353] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 



Humanists, the, 156 

Hume, David, 328 

Huxley, T. II., on consciousness, 36 

Imagination, Aristotle on, 77-78; 

faculty of, 101-103 
Incipient psychotics, 315 
Industrial education, 168 
Inherited knowledge, 143-146 
Instrumental and cultural studies, 

150-160 
Invention, learning through, 240-242 
Inventions a gradual development, 

242-243 
Isocrates, on education, 341 

James, William, on two kinds of 
knowledge, 51 ; on training the 
memory, 93-94, 96, 97 ; on a 
baby's sensations, 112 

Jevons, F. 11, 247 

John of Salisbury, on the Nominal- 
ist-Realist controversy, 59 

Johnson, Samuel, doctrine of, as 
to knowledge, 35 

Judgment, 99-100 ; a specific ac- 
tivity, 100 

Jung, on early experiences, 126 

Kant, Immanuel, on knowledge, 35 ; 

on function of science, 189 
Keyser, C. J., on comprehensibility, 

195 

Kinds of education, 142-169; self- 
education, 142-143 ; what we 
inherit, 143-146; task of the 
educator, 146; "elementary" and 
"higher" classification, 146-150; 
instrumental and cultural classifi- 
cation, 1 50-1 5 1 ; history, 1 52-1 54 ; 
science, 154-155; education for 
efficiency, 160- 161 ; liberal and 
illiberal education, 162-164; vo- 
cational and avocational educa- 
tion, 164-169 

Kipling, R., 312 

Knowledge, three grades of, 7-1 1; 
common-sense, 7-10; scientific, 
7, 8, 9-10, 11-15; philosophic. 



7, 11-15; quantity in the. educa- 
tional scheme, 20 ; scorned by 
one school of education, 21-22; 
relation of, to mental training, 
22-24; what it really is, 25-26, 
30-58 ; awareness " a survival 
agency," 30; a necessity, 30-31; 
contributed by things, 31-33 ; ob- 
tained by copying, 33 ; of objects 
outside of experience, 34-36; re- 
lation of, to facts and truths, 38- 
44 ; inexactness in naming things, 
45-49 ; gained through concep- 
tualizing, 50 ; ability to use, 50- 
51 ; Professor James on the two 
kinds of, 51 ; Plato's doctrine of, 
55-58; the process of getting, 
108, 109, 131-136; comes from 
doing, 175-179; offered by sci- 
ence, 184-1S5; for its own sake, 
185-187 ; as an instrument, 187- 
190; two kinds of, 212; obtained 
from searching, 337-338; idolatry 
of, 341-344 

Language, not a substitute for ex- 
perience, 1 1 3-1 16; an institution, 
127-129; function of, 129-131 ; 
and inheritance, 144-145; a con- 
tinuous study, 150; defined, 183 

Latin, place of, in school, 1 59 ; wrong 
method in teaching, 198-200, 218 

Learning, by problem getting, 233- 
257 ; through observation, 233- 
234 ; by studying behavior, 
234-236; relation of attention 
to, 236-240, 256-257 ; through 
invention, 240-243 ; the scien- 
tific method of, 244-249; purpose- 
ful accumulation of facts, 24S ; 
searching for truth, 249-251 ; 
teaching and, 251-253; students' 
aim in, 253-256; by definitions, 
260-267 ; specific, 346-349 

Lecture method of teaching, 224- 
227 

Leibniz, 312 

Liberal education, purpose of, 63 ; 
vs. illiberal education, 162-164 



[354 



INDEX 



Literature, as an instrumental study, 

155-160; defined, 183 
Locke, John, on the function of 

education, 83-S4, 85 ; on training 

the memoi'y, 92 
Logic characterized, 1S3 
Lowell, A. L., 293 
Luther, Martin, 81, 82 

McClymonds, J. \V., on education 

in the United States, 9 
Mann, C. R., on teaching physics, 

198; on learning definitions, 

264-266 
Mathematics, in plan of education, 

148, 149, 159; characterized, 183; 

heuristic method in, 231 ; and 

logic, 293 
Measurements in education, 294-314 
Meiklejohn, Alexander, 230 
Melancthon, Si, 82 
Memorizing, Locke on value of, 85 ; 

matter for, 276-278 ; material for, 

276-278 
Memory, as a single faculty, 90-91 ; 

tests of, 92-93, 94-97 ; Locke on, 

92 ; Newman on, 92 ; Professor 

James on, 92-93 ; retentiveness 

unchangeable, 93 ; improving, 

93-94 
Method, place in education, 195- 
232 ; the test of comprehensi- 
bility, 195-196; importance of, 
196-199; wrong, 200-201; edu- 
cational, 201-205 ; ^^ outline, 
202 ; what it must do, 205-206 ; 
and aim of education, 206-212; 
knowledge 0/ vs. knowledge 
aboict^ 212-215; relation of con- 
tent to, 215-217; the course of 
study, 217-219; fitting studies 
to students, 220-222 ; the reci- 
tation method, 222; the exami- 
nation method, 223 ; the lecture 
method, 224-227 ; testing a, 227- 
228; the Socratic method, 228- 
229; the heuristic method, 
229-230; the genetic method, 



Meumann, on training the memory, 

94 
Milton, John, on the shortcomings 

of the linguist, 218 
Mind, " a survival agency," 30 ; a 

picture-making device, 31 ; a 

generalizer, 97 ; a problem solver, 

266 
Music, learning, 174 

Naming things, 49-50 

Napoleon, 126 

Newman, John, on training the 
memory, 92 

Noun, incorrectly defined by gram- 
mar, 45; the evolution of the 
proper, 47-49 

Observation, faculty of, 101-103; 

place of, in education, 233-234 
Oratory and conversation, 98 

Penmanship, 147-148, 200, 296-297, 

299, 300, 302, 304 
Percepts, source of, 177-178 
Persons distinguished from things, 

123-124 
Pillsbury, on training the memory, 

95 

Philosophic knowledge vs. scien- 
tific knowledge, 11-15 

Philosophy, the basis of educational 
theory and practice, 2 ; the func- 
tion of, 12; practical value of, 
13; of the individual, 13; object 
of all real, 325 

Physical training, specific rather 
than general, 88-90 ; need of 
more attention to, 219 

Plato, on knowledge, 55-56; on 
formal discipline, 66-78 ; theory 
of crime, 69; on speech, 125; 
the story of Theuth, 128-129; 
the definition of education, 139; 
method of, 182 ; on comprehen- 
sibility, 195; on educational test, 
220 ; and the Socratic method, 
228 ; on the thinker, 331 

Poetry, the study of, 214 



[355] 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 



Porter, Noah, on formal discipline, 

63 
Practice, vs. theory in education, 

4-6; the valuable kind of, 6-7 
Proper names, the evolution of, 

47-49 
Protagoras, on theory and practice 

in education, 5 
Pythagorean method, 222 

Question method in education, 250 
Quintilian, on education, 79-80 ; on 
speech, 125 

Raphael, 132 
Raumer, von, Karl, 2 
Reading, 147 ; and culture, 226 
Real predicates, doctrine of, 260- 

266 
Realists, belief of, 156 
Reality defined, 32 
Recitation method of learning, 222- 

224 
Reed, Thomas, 86 
Reformation, education influenced 

by, 80-S5 
Renaissance, education influenced 

by, 80-85 
Retardates, 314 
Romans, attitude toward education, 

79 ; history of, 134 
Rousseau, on Plato's " Republic," 

67 
Royce, Josiah, on motor habits and 

ideas, 50 
Ruediger, W, C, 103 

San Francisco State Normal School 
experiment, 318-322 

Schools, administration of, a branch 
of government, 10; three kinds 
of, 18-24; place in education, 
136; function of, 136-141 ; talk- 
ing, 259-260 

Science, as an instrumental study, 
154-160; defined, 154, 155, 183; 
function of, 189 

Sciences, renaming of, needed, 344- 
346 



Scientific knowledge, what it is, 7- 
1 1 ; compared with philosophic 
knowledge, 11-15; not merely 
classified knowledge, 40-43 

Scientist, the, his method of work, 
244-247 

Self-education the true education, 
142-143, 197 

Self-preservation, relation to knowl- 
edge, 188-189 

Seneca, 163 

Sensations, world of, 104-105; how 
they come to us, 178 

Senses, world of, 116-119 

Shakespeare, William, sharing the 
truth of, 132-133; poetry, 136 

Shorey, Paul, on formal discipline, 
64-65 

Smell, sense of, relation to experi- 
ence, 118-1 19 

Social inheritance, 143-146 

Social utility a product of educa- 
tion, 139 

Socrates, on physical training, 88 ; 
on method, 182 

Socratic method of instruction, 222, 
228-229 

Space, sense of, 122 

Speech defectives, 315 

Spelling, 1 50 

Spencer, Herbert, on consciousness, 
36; learning by rote, 197; on 
question method, 260 

Statistical method, shortcomings and 
dangers of, 305-309 

Steam engine, invention of, 242-243 

Studies, selection of, 220-222 

Studying, general aim in, 253-254; 
specific aim in, 254-256 

Supernormals, 315 

Teacher, the, philosophy of educa- 
tion and, 14-15; function of, 18, 
179-184; place of, in education, 
23, 136; how he should teach, 
251-252 
Tennyson, Alfred, on causes, 52 
Textbooks, place in education, 19- 
20, 23, 136, 230, 270 



[356] 



INDEX 



Theory, some uses of, 5-6 ; and 

practice, 6 
Things distinguished from persons, 

123-124 
Thinker, the, Plato's definition of, 

Thorndil^e, E. L., 59, 296 

Thucydides, 121 

Time sense, 1 20-121 

Tolstoy, on the artist, 133 

Trade education, 168 

Transferability of training, 97-99 

Truth, its relation to experience, 
27 ; as facts, 37-38 ; its relation 
to facts and knowledge, 38-44 

Uniformity in education, 311, 312 



Verbal study, 181 

Vocation, relation to a liberal edu- 
cation, 63 
Vocational education, 164-169 
Vocational guidance, 316^317 

Wallin, J. E. W., 314 

Watt, James, 242 

Wiese, Ludwig, 2 

Winch, W. H., experiments of, in 

testing memory, 95-96 
Wolf, F. A., 8^87 
Wolff, Christian, 83 
Writing, art of, 147 

Youmans, E. L., on doctrine of 
formal discipline, 62-64 



[357] 










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